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A Ghost Story

Zahmen departed from his drinking buddies and their warnings and went, alone, into the woods. His stride was unhurried, decisive, and calm. He found a worn, overgrown path between the trees and followed it, holding his head high to see a glimpse of his destination before he arrived. His boots made the leaves shift aside into parallel stacks, little walls on either side of his footprints.

He saw the house ahead and stepped casually into its overgrown yard. The fence surrounding it had long since succumbed to time and the abundant plant life, as had the house itself: it was overgrown with vines and tree limbs had pushed holes into the walls. It was small, slender--it had two stories and a wide wraparound porch. Tiles were missing from the roof; the paint may once have been blue or maybe green, but was now a dingy gray.

A large, faded sign reading “DANGER! DO NOT ENTER!” lay lopsided on the ground, but Zahmen ignored it; he pushed aside a bit of fence in his way and made his casual way up to the peeling front door.

The floor of the living room creaked beneath his feet; the whole place seemed ready to fall if he so much as sneezed near it. He half-closed the door, letting in only a small c***k of blue light, and stepped into the middle of the room, looking curiously around. Dusty furniture pushed to one side and covered in musty sheets, a fireplace filled with a sludge made of dirt, rainwater, mold, and dust, a smell of rotting floorboards and an unhappy death.

Something stirred behind him; he turned and saw a half-formed apparition in the doorway between living room and kitchen. It looked like a shimmering heat haze with pale smoke behind it; he could see the faded wallpaper beyond what seemed to be a torso. As he gazed levelly at it, features formed, hair rippled down, and silent, transparent feet lighted on the floor; the form of a girl, pearly white, stood before him.

This, he assumed, was the ghost he had been warned about.

She seemed at once furious and sad; her voice echoed when she spoke with half a sob hidden in her words.

“Who are you to trespass into the house of my fathers? Leave! Go now, before I force you to join me in the hell of the undead!”

She sounded pretty convincing; Zahmen thought about it for a moment. Then, just as she had gotten over the surprise at his cavalier attitude and puffed herself up with fury again, he reached into his pocket, stuck a cigarette from a half-empty case into his mouth, and offered the box to her.

“Wanna smoke?”

They sat against a wall and puffed on the cigarettes in silence. When both were halfway done with their second ones, they began to talk. Naturally, the conversation almost immediately turned to death, and why ghosts existed.

“Hell if I know,” was the only enlightenment the girl could offer. “Why do YOU exist?”

“Hell if I know.”

They were silent for awhile; and then the girl sighed, a cloud of smoke ascending through her head and to the ceiling. “I hate this wreck of a place,” she told him. “It was much nicer when I lived here.”

“What’s stopping you from staying? Or cleaning, for that matter?”

“Oh, I stopped caring…and I don’t really want to leave. MOSTLY--” She threw a glance at him. “--people leave me alone. But I wouldn’t want the rumors to stop…if people didn’t think the house was haunted, they’d destroy it, and then there would be nothing to hold the memories with.”

“Why do you need to be here to remember?”

“Memories fade with your corpse, you know. Once you stop knowing what you look like, it’s hard to place yourself in memories--you don’t recognize yourself. At the very least, you need a solid place to put the memories in. I can’t remember anything anymore that happened outside this place; if I leave here I’ll remember nothing.”

“Sad.”

“Yep.” She flicked ash unconcernedly onto the floor. “But half the stuff I remember isn’t that happy to begin with.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Nah…. It’s just the usual stuff no one ever gets right. Haven’t you ever regretted anything?”

“Yep.”

“Like what?”

He shrugged unconcernedly, gesturing to the holes in his pants, behind which the skin was scratched and red. “Should’ve worn better jeans.”

She laughed. “I shouldn’t’ve worn a corset to that dance.”

“Should’ve brought a flashlight, I might never get back until dawn.”

“I should have kept the light on, that one night.”

They traded back and forth, slowly becoming more serious, covering more important things.

“I should have told him no.”

“I should have asked her out.”

“I should have kept a knife in my room.”

“I should have stopped my dad from leaving.”

“I should have screamed for help.”

“I should have stayed home.”

The girl sighed, puffing out another cloud of smoke. “So much I should’ve done,” she said wistfully. “And it led to my death. But why do you regret? You, at least, can fix your mistakes, and ask forgiveness…you’re alive, aren’t you?”

Zahmen sucked thoughtfully at the end of the cigarette. “True,” he said eventually, “I can.” He tossed the butt into a trash can beneath a leak in the ceiling. “But you know…it’s not too late for you either.” He rose to his feet; she followed him to the door and into the pale moonlight. He grinned. “You’re still here; you’re not quite so dead as you would think.”

Wow...
Claps for Kirby!
This line:
Once you stop knowing what you look like, it’s hard to place yourself in memories--you don’t recognize yourself.
Wow.
Struck a cord in me.
So true!

How does a ghost smoke a cig?

I understand that it could hold it, depending on what view of ghosts you take.. But.. No lungs? They don't breathe therefore.. no way to inhale...

I dunno. That was the thing running in my mind.

I like it.

Haaa. Corset.

That aside, you should write more.