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The Prom Dress 
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The Prom Dress
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It was the kind of deserted road that just seems to say, let 'er rip. Let's see how fast this baby can go. The blacktop was still black as fresh tar. The double yellow line was still so bright and shiny from lack of wear that it gleamed -- oh yes, it gleamed -- under the glare of coming headlights. But there were no headlights on this road. Not this night. Kenneth Scheer shifted into high gear.His car was his love. He bought it in Connecticut a few months before he took his new systems analyst job in Tennessee. It was huge as a tank and twice as heavy, but damn, could it haul. Straight-eight engines have a lot of horsepower. He'd done everything he could to restore it and get it into cherry condition.
Cherry. Virgin.
The only thing you have to worry about driving at night on Highway 11e in Johnson County is deer. It can seem so peaceful at night under those old growth trees that reach into the sky, that lace their branches together way overhead like fingers reaching out, allowing only the slightest hint of the moon to peek through. It's only natural that deer should think nothing of crossing a little bit of asphalt.
Why did the deer cross the road? To get clobbered by a Pontiac!
But still, when he saw the white shape fleeing across the road in the light of his high-beams, he panicked and slammed hard on his brakes.
"Sweet Jesus."
Rubber screamed. The car skidded out of control, sliding towards a girl in white, frozen stiff in the face of the approaching headlights. The car ground to a teeth-rattling halt mere inches away from her.
Pale, in a white satin and lace gown, she shivered and swayed as if about to faint. Kenneth threw open the car door and craned his neck out; she didn't seem to notice.
"I'm going to be late for the prom," she mumbled.
"Are you nuts?" he yelled. "What the hell are you doing out here? You could have got yourself killed just now! Jesus!"
She blinked, staring into the lights and trembling. Her wide frightened eyes reflected like shiny pennies.
Kenneth sighed. His frustration and anger quickly reduced down to shame and concern. She didn't look well at all. Her face was sickly and pale like the underbelly of a fish. Red tresses fell tangled across her white shoulders.
"Miss. Are you okay?" he asked.
"Are you my boyfriend?" she asked. "Where is he. He's late. He's so very late."
"I'm so sorry about this. Damn! I must have scared the crap out of you just now!"
She stared into the headlights, moving her lips. Her white dress hung from her slender form, dirty and oily, as if she'd fallen.
The Pontiac idled, its straight-eight making that guttural purr. He came around, moving cautiously as if she were a frightened animal that might bolt. "Did somebody do something to you?" he asked. "How did you get here? Do you live around here?"
"Oh, my God," she said, her voice rising. She swayed faintly, like a tree blown by the wind. "I'm going to be late for my prom!"
"Your prom?"
She suddenly whirled and looked straight into his eyes, becoming alive and aware of him for the first time. Kenneth backed away.
"Yes! It's my prom night. Oh dear!" She clutched her dangling corsage and looked all around. "Somebody was supposed to pick me up." She looked down and picked nervously at the sash around her dress. Foxtails were caught in the taffeta. Her white heels were smeared with grime. "He was supposed to pick me up."
"Hey, it's okay," he told her soothingly. "It's all good. Listen. My name is Ken. What's yours?"
She looked blank for a moment as if remembering. "Maryanne," she said with just a ghost of a smile.
"How about I give you a ride home, Maryanne? You shouldn't be alone out here."
He led the unresisting girl to the passenger door, which he graciously opened for her. She sat down inside, demurely tucking her dress beneath her.
* * *
He tried to ask her questions, but it was difficult. It took a while for the shock and fear to melt away. She caught sight of her smeared lipstick in the car mirror and twisted it around, then reached in her purse for her lipstick and carefully reapplied it.
"Do you live around here?" he asked again.
She pursed her lips around a handkerchief, then put it back in her purse, satisfied. "I don't usually get to wear, makeup," she told him in a nervous drawl. Her eyes were drawn to the dashboard. "Oh! Would you mind so very much? May I please hear the radio?"
"Oh . . . No! I wouldn't mind! Go right ahead."
Her freshly red lips broke into an innocent smile. Kenneth felt relieved. The tension, the look of madness and shock in her stricken face had worried him. She was young and beautiful, thin and delicate, like a porcelain doll. Her eyebrows were fine dark lines carved above blue-gray eyes. A charm bracelet jingled from her delicate wrist as she turned the knobs. There was nothing but static at first -- not very surprising, this far from town. A few stations chirped.
"You would think we could get at least one country station from Nashville, wouldn't you?" he asked.
She carefully tuned backwards to a swing station.
The Atchison Topeka and the Santa Fe . . .
"Oh my, this is so very nice," she said with a gentle smile. She turned around, surveying the car, touching the leather of the seats. "This is a very nice automobile! It is most impressive."
He grinned. "Do you like it? It's a '39 Pontiac, all restored. Roomy, isn't it?"
She closed her eyes and stretched against the door. The satin of her dress rustled against the leather seats. "A Pontiac! You must be quite wealthy."
"Yeah." He laughed. "Don't I wish. This best cost me a fortune. You can trust me on that! See that radio? It has real vacuum tubes in it. It's expensive, but I guess everybody has something that they love. This car is my baby." He rubbed his hands across the steering wheel lovingly, beaming with pride.
"So, tell me," he said. "I keep asking you. Do you live around here? I've got to take you somewhere."
"Oh my goodness," she said anxiously. "I can't be late for the prom! There are people waiting for me! Please, we're not very far! It would be ever so kind of you if you could take me there."
Those sad wistful eyes, the way her forehead wrinkled -- "Are you sure there's a prom this late at night? I don't know where it could be . . ."
"Turn right up ahead," she told him. "Please?"
* * *
Boop boop dit-tem dat-tem what-tem Chu!
And they swam and they swam all over the dam . . .
He didn't see the turnoff at first, and might not have noticed it without her help, but it was there, all right. The smooth blacktop gave way to a graded dirt road that wound its way through old trees that crowded around tightly.
"My, Ken, you are such a gentleman! I just don't know how to thank you enough! Oh! Turn right again. Right up here."
"Turn where?" he asked. It was too dark to see, the trees too close. But the twisty rural road knew exactly where it was taking them. Small animals skittered across the path, their eyes reflecting like tiny mirrors in the blackness. Low-lying tree branches scraped and slid across the windshield of his car.
"I can't see a thing!" Ken said.
And then the trees cleared. He stopped his car.
The moon shone overhead, the first time he'd been able to see it all night, full and blue. The night was so cloudless, so inky black, this far between Brist and Bluff City, that the stars stood out not like pinpoints of light, but like white sand strewn across the sky. Ahead of him in the darkness, his headlights shone upon the tattered remains of a dead old building.
"This is it," she said breathlessly.
"This is what?"
It might have been a school at one time, but it lay in ruins. Old paint peeled in sheets from the walls. Doors stood askew on hinges. What looked like the main entrance was now just an open toothless mouth, spread wide as if to scream. The wings to both sides, where classrooms should have been, stared back at them with windowless eyes. Tall rye grass grew everywhere, the final conqueror over this intrusion into its natural domain. And to the side, the largest part of the structure, a tall building stood separate, supported in front with large roman columns, proud but losing the fight. It's top was decayed and partially collapsed, a gaping hole into a feral darkness within.
"Maryanne, where the hell are we?"
"Polk High." She opened the car door and scrambled out, clutching her corsage that threatened to fall off of her dress.
"But there's nobody here," he said.
With her back to him, she wistfully asked, "Do you think I'm too late?"
"Maryanne, this is not a high school!" She didn't turn around. "I don't know what it used to be but it's nothing now."
"Please don't say that," she told him. "It's so important to me. Too important to be taken from me now."
Then she turned around and froze stock-still. "Wait," she whispered. A gleam came into her eyes. "I can hear them."
Damn, he thought. She was nuts. How was he going to get her out of here?
She stared into the west. "I see them, now," she whispered, excitedly. "Don't you see them?"
"Get in the car," he told her, reaching for her arm.
And then he saw them, too. Like yellow pearls beaded onto a necklace, a far off procession of eerie lights flickered between the thick tree branches. They were growing brighter and coming closer.
"I think we should get out of here."
The lights turned towards them, following the old road. Pairs of yellow lights bobbed in the ruts and on the rocks.
He recognized the first car immediately. He'd almost bought one -- a 1933 Ford Model A. It passed by their car and pulled up alongside, parking ever so naturally. Dozens of cars came behind, their engines backfiring and rattling, surrounding Kenneth's Pontiac. Clean cut boys and girls, in their best dresses and suits, greeted each other with smiles, kisses, and slaps on the back.
Maryanne clutched her corsage and bounced in the air.
"Maryanne!" shouted a boy opening the door of a '39 Chevy Cabriolet. Its flawless body gleamed, an insult to the work that Ken had put into his precious Pontiac. The boy had short slicked-down blond hair and wore a white blazer, bow tie and baggy trousers. Giggles came from shadowy faces inside his car -- the cameos of bows and ponytails and men's hats.
"J.T.!" Maryanne yelled. "Elma!"
A girl with a pink sweater tied around her neck held J.T.'s hand. "You didn't think I was going to miss my prom! Especially not when I heard you were coming!"
Around them, laughing couples piled out of cars.
"Hi," Kenneth choked out to the couple. He turned to Maryanne. "I guess this is where I take off. I'm sure one of your friends can give you a ride home."
"Please, don't go," she said, gripping his hand tightly, her face again anxious. "I don't have a date!"
"A date? To what?"
And then a couple opened the wide double doors between the two far columns. A pool of light spilled across the weed-ridden path. A live band inside was playing songs too old to be called oldies anymore. There were shouts, and laughter and the sounds of people being joyous.
"Please," Maryanne begged, tugging at his hand, dragging him.
* * *
Just inside the door stood an older man wearing black blazer and bow tie. His eyes were huge orbs under glasses like fishbowls. "Show me your tickets," he said.
Maryanne fished from her purse a white card.
Polk High School
Senior Prom Dance
April 15, 1939
Maryanne Beaucamp
The man looked at the card, then at Kenneth.
"Mr. Pollard," Maryanne interrupted. "He's with me. My beau couldn't make it. You wouldn't mind so very much if he escorted me, now would you?"
Those huge fishy eyes peered at him with suspicion and distrust and concern for the sanctity of his domain. Kenneth was sure that he was about to be sent on his way. But with a disgusted nod and wave, the old man let them both pass.
And inside:
It was such a beautiful and amazing sight. On the stage, a band of ten played, in identical cream colored blazers with black trimming. There were brass and woodwinds, piano and drums. Couples danced with their arms around each other. A beautiful girl with dark eyes stood forward and sang:
I'm in the mood for love
Simply because you're near meeeee
Funny, but when you're near meeeee
I'm in the mood for love
Maryanne clutched her corsage, moving to the music in dreamy rapture. Her thick red hair swayed back and forth across her back.
Young men and women danced across the floor, staring into each other's eyes and giggling nervously. A prim stony-faced matron moved around the room, hawk-like in her determination to keep order. She separated one couple that held each other too closely. They laughed. As soon as she had moved on, they clutched each other all the more tightly and kissed.
"I want to dance," Maryanne said softly. She looked at Ken expectantly, but he shook his head in panic.
"I can't. I'm . . . I'm too thirsty." He rushed away.
* * *
It was more than just thirst. He felt dazed. He had been on his way home when he had walked into this strange dream of nostalgia, all the more disturbing because of its beauty. He wanted to leave as soon as he could get a sip of water.
He found a hallway connected to the gymnasium/ballroom with a water fountain. As he walked towards it, he saw a pony-tailed girl backed up against a wall. A boy with slicked hair held her in a tight pelvis-grinding clench, kissing her sweaty blushing face. They both looked up at him.
Ken looked away. "Sorry. I was just looking for water."
The girl giggled. They grinned. "You don't belong here," they said.
"Really . . . I was just looking for something to drink."
"There's plenty of punch inside," the boy said. "Why don't you get some? Why don't you get some then leave." The girl shushed the boy with her finger on his lips.
"Yes," Kenneth gasped. "I think you're right." He backed away.
The couple giggled, then started kissing again. The girl's leg raised up to press and slide against the boy's.
Damn, he thought, back in the ballroom. He had to get out of here. It was true. He didn't belong here. He looked left and right for the exit.
"You're a Yankee, aren't you?" a gruff voice said.
Ken turned around. Inches behind him, nose to nose, stood the fishy-eyed Mr. Pollard. His bland face and heavy glasses made it impossible to read his expression.
"Yes. I'm from Connecticut."
Pollard's eyes moved up and down slowly, inspecting him like he was a disgusting roadkill.
"It was very kind of you to bring Maryanne, Mr. Scheer."
"It was no problem, sir," Ken said.
"Perhaps," Pollard looked over his shoulder at Maryanne, swaying by herself and watching the dance. Turning back to Ken, "We worried that the dear girl wouldn't make it. She came so very late."
"Yes. Yes. She was worried about being late! Pardon me. Do you have anything to drink? I feel like I'm choking."
Suddenly the prim matron from the dance floor stood next to Pollard, offering Ken a glass of punch.
"Oh yes, thank you," Ken squeezed out, grasping it in his nervously shaking hands. He swallowed it in two noisy gulps.
She laughed, and suddenly she seemed so much younger. The wrinkles of her faced smoothed. "You don't have to drink it quite so quickly, Darling."
Pollard continued. "We weren't quite certain if it was wise having you here, Mr. Scheer. You're not from our school."
"I know. Well, I was about to leave, anyway."
The woman said, "Oh, don't you worry none. We've decided you may stay a while, if you please." The two teachers glanced at each other with eyes that spoke of a deeper relationship.
Pollard said, "It was very nice meeting you, Mr. Scheer."
Invitation to stay or not, he wanted to get out. He spied the exit and was making a beeline for it when he saw Maryanne across the room, sad-eyed and still clutching her corsage to her immaculate white dress. She saw him and ran across the floor, brushing away the dancers.
"You're going now, aren't you?"
He took her hand. "I'm sure you'll be able to get a ride."
"Please," she said. "Please? Won't you dance with me? Just one dance?"
He looked at the exit, and she repeated again, "Please . . ."
A slow dance came on.
Blue Moooooon,
"I think I know that song," he said.
He never said yes or no. He just knew that one minute he was standing there, looking at the exit, then looking into her beautiful blue-gray eyes . . .
You saw me standing aloooone
Whispers. Dance with her. Dance with her. Dance with her. No! He must not. Whispers. Dance. Go on! Be a gentleman. He's not one of us! Don't you see? Dance. Whispers.
Without a dream in my heaaaart
Without a love of my oooown . . .
They're dancing! Yes! Shut up! How interesting! You didn't think they would. Whispers. Whispers. Fool! He's a Yankee. I said to shut up. He doesn't belong here! Oh yes he does oh yes. Whispers.
All he heard was music.
He was gazing into eyes so wide open and blue, so fragile and sincere, windows into a heart so ready to burst, that he didn't know how he could have ever thought of refusing her. Her eyes narrowed into happy slits as he wrapped his arm around her waist and began to lead. It felt so clumsy at first, that familiar box pattern. Step back, step left, step forward, step right. Their legs brushed together, her white satin and taffeta all crinkly against the cotton-polyester of his slacks.
The lights had grown dim -- so dim it seemed as if there was nobody else but him and her, moving in boxes, swirling slowly, his arm around her waist, her fingers entwined with his. Nothing else existed in the whole world except that wistful music, the clumsy motion of his feet, the feel of her in his arms, the beating of her heart, the gleam of her red wet lipstick.
With a contented sigh, she rested her head on his shoulder. "This is nice," she whispered.
"Yes, he told her. "It is."
But then he felt them in the dark shadows of the room. Those faceless eyes. All around him they were watching, staring like hungry cats, those faceless feral eyes.
Blue Moooooon,
You knew just what I was theeeeere for
You heard me saying a praaaaayer for
Someone I really could caaaaare for . . .
As the song ended, amidst distant applause, Maryanne Beaucamp looked up at Ken. On the night of her long awaited prom, she whispered, so softly that nobody else could hear:
"Thank you, Ken. This is the happiest night of my life."
He couldn't help but reach out and cradle her face.
Her swanlike neck arched for him. Her breasts smelled like old jasmine perfume. Her soft tender lips yielded to his. Her small pink tongue flirted, briefly enough to tease, a promise of what could be. She tasted like spearmint gum and fruit punch and Max Factor lipstick and rare blooming flowers. Rare garden hothouse flowers. He smelled that flowery hothouse air in her breath, and the fertile garden topsoil.
Topsoil, so rich and black, so rich and black, so fertile and full of dead things, so good for precious hothouse annuals that sprout their tender lovely petals for just one season, only to wilt, to shrivel, to die. To be trampled under foot.
He tasted all of this. He smelled all of this. And then he was all alone in the dark in an old ruined building.
* * *
Just an old ruined building. Wooden planks from bleachers and what might have once been a band stand lay scattered haphazardly on the floor, rotten and broken and infested by white grubby termites. The skylight was broken, a gaping hole through which he could see thousands of stars.
He ran for the exit, stumbling through the jagged detritus, howling and sobbing and sweeping away the thick dirty cobwebs that wound around his face. He found his car still running, parked headfirst in the tall weeds. There were no other cars, no other people for miles around -- only the moon and the stars and the dim green light of his dashboard. He sped away, driving dangerously fast down the two-lane blacktop highway. It's a miracle he didn't hit something and die.
* * *
It was a whole year before he actually got the nerve to tell somebody about what happened to him that night. He told his friend Jay, over lunch. He didn't get very far into the story before he was interrupted.
"Ha! You must have been to see the Prom Dress Ghost!"
Ken blinked. "The what?"
"Oh come on!" Jay said, biting into his pastrami sandwich, then talking again with his mouth full and chomping away. A yellow dab of mustard clung to the corner of his top lip. "That's so old. Every Halloween, people here love to tell each other that old whopper and go looking for her out on 11e. It's a really cute story."
" . . . The what?"
Jay told him about the Prom Dress Ghost tour in Tennessee. That Halloween, Ken took the tour to find out more about the Prom Dress Ghost.
Under an old oak tree, dozens of people, grownups and children, some in costumes, some not, stood on the old Highway 11e and listened. The tour guide held a single flashlight under her chin as she told them the old story that many had heard before, but came back to hear again. The children giggled, nervously.
She told them how once upon a time, a beautiful young girl died on the night of her high school prom. She was run over by a car, possibly at this very same spot.
Some of them looked around at the road, which was now smooth asphalt. Ken clutched his stomach, feeling nauseous.
She told them that some people say they still see that girl on this very same road, wearing her prom dress. Sometimes her beautiful dress is clean and white, her corsage still in place. Sometimes it's torn and bloodied, covered with the ground-in marks of oily tire tread. And sometimes she even wanders across the road, headless from the force of the collision.
Children oohed and aahed and girlfriends grabbed their boyfriend's hands.
The guide had a lot more to tell. She was telling them the names of the ghost and the name of the ghost's boyfriend, but Kenneth put his hands over his ears. He couldn't stay a second longer.
He had to run. He sped away in his '39 Pontiac. Just like that other night a year before, he nearly killed himself driving too quickly. At one point, he felt a horrible thump, as if he had run over a cat, but he didn't stop. He didn't look back. He couldn't. He had to escape.
When he got home, when he finally thought, it's okay, what I think happened didn't really happen, he saw something written in the dirt on the rear windshield of his 1939 Pontiac.
It was a heart, with an arrow through it. And inside the heart, it said:
Kenneth+Maryanne
Forever
* * *
I'm sure you think at this point that I made the whole story up. Well, not exactly. My story is fictional. But there's more to it than that.
You see, the thing is, there really is a Prom Dress Ghost.
There really are Prom Dress Ghost tours in Tennessee, every Halloween. My friend, Carrie Mottern, used to be the tour guide.
Tennessee has its own ghostly memories. This was just one. There's also the Happy Birthday House, where a girl axed her family to death simply because they forgot her birthday. There's the old train trestle over Bristol that saw the hanging of dozens of slaves that came so close to freedom.
Some people really do say they have seen the ghost of Maryanne Beaucamp, who died one night in 1939 wearing her beautiful white dress. I don't know if ghosts really exist. But if she does exist, this ghost, if she still haunts the people of Tennessee, then she must be a very sad and lost soul, indeed. So if you're ever driving on Highway 11e between Brist and Bluff City on a dark night, and you see a pretty girl in a white dress that looks lost and confused and in need of help, be kind to her -- give her a ride where she wants to go. Where she needs to go.
And this Halloween, please remember to drive carefully.
The End
(c) ennui October 9, 1999
Blue Moon (c)1934 Lorenz Hart and Richard Rodgers
Three Little Fishies (c)1939 Saxie Dowell
I'm in the Mood for Love (c)1935 Jimmy McHugh and Dorothy Fields