The Ghost & The Ghost
fiction • #8
How does a ghost know when it’s truly time to leave? When another ghost tells it so.
By Richard M. Ankers
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The ghost watched from the shadows like a slip of white paint. I dared myself to get out of bed and run my fingers over it, expecting that slick gloss of a newly painted skirting. If only I’d had the courage, a spontaneous moment of bold endeavour, but I didn’t, because I was me.
The ghost came to my room every night at the same time. When the old church rang in the witching hour, it was there. Sometimes, when the wind blew in the opposite direction and stole the ancient bell’s tones, I almost slept. Almost, but not quite. Time was not my friend in those seconds; they lingered like hooks in the skin.
The ghost never appeared unless the darkness obliterated all traces of life. If even stray starlight dared the window glass, the ghost never came. In the same way the night was abhorrent to me, light frightened the ghost to death. Was there such a concept to a ghost?
The ghost came earlier that last night. After a year of constant exactness, it broke the cycle. I’d barely flicked off the bedside light when that doomed spirit appeared. Cavernous were its voids for eyes. Billowing was its form, flapping like a giant white bat. It reared towards me, and I hid all but my eyes beneath the sheets. I had to watch. I had to!
The ghost bowed that drear evening and drifted to the corner it always occupied. And I realised how it filled the space, loomed larger, was different to normal. We both waited for something, but only one of us knew what.
The ghost welcomed its kin when it appeared out of nowhere and into its always space. A non-arm rose and fell upon a non-shoulder. A small, white dome dipped a relief. Whether they were mother and daughter, father and son, who knew, but the night glowed a glorious, polished obsidian at their reunification. Then they both vanished, without so much as a pop.
The ghost and the ghost, as I called them, never returned. That night was the last night I failed to sleep. Those I told mocked and belittled me. Not a one believed the dead could feel. But they weren’t there, and I was. That ghost taught me a lesson, that tiny spectre of white: to wait for even the impossible, as I have and always will. For death is only the beginning of the search and it is nowhere near the end.
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Richard M. Ankers is the English author of The Eternals Series, Britannia Unleashed and co-author of The Poetry of Pronouns: She. He. They. Richard has featured in Spillwords, Love Letters To Poe, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, and feels privileged to have appeared in many more. Richard lives to write. richardankers.com
