Foe and Phantom

November 1st, 1999. 

The day my world ceased to exist. The day when the ominous and baleful mood of halloween was supposed to dissolve into the enchanting and festive season of Christmas. But that sinister feeling of October never stopped for me. It was what carried me through life. Kept me on my toes. Alert and awake at all times. Until one night when I let my guard down. The one night where it was the most important to keep it up. 

That was five years ago. It is the eve of November 1st, 2004. I have never come to this place before. Staring down and seeing the engraving of my name on the headstone, I imagined some type of dissociative feeling, but this was just another rock to me. 

I looked up at the tall, ominous trees that outline the graveyard. They seemed to be waving in the wind, but I couldn’t feel the breeze. My dead eyes traveled around the landscape. There were some people coming and going. Sitting on the benches with their heads in their hands. Mourning those they lost. I couldn’t tell if there were others like me around. We can’t see each other, just like how the Actuals can’t see me. 

Yes. I said “The Actuals.” That’s what I call them at least. Those that are still actually alive. Unlike me. Unlike the soul sitting six feet below in the capsule to my left. You may be wondering what I am if I’m not an “Actual.” I do not appreciate the word “ghost,” but who am I to tell you what to call me. I’m dead. It’s as simple as that. However, if you would like a proper term, I prefer “phantom.” By definition, a phantom is a figment of the imagination, and who’s to say what is real or not real. 

I decide to take a walk around my new home. I occasionally stop at a stone or two and read the names. I found a handful of people I once knew, but it is not easy to find evidence of my past due to my unexpectedly short time with the living. 

When I approach the finality of my evening stroll, I begin to find the way back to my own engraving. I look up the hill to where my final place lies, but freeze in my tracks at the most pretryfing sight. 

The silhouette of a man stands over my tomb. His demeanor presents itself as demanding but depressed. His head hung but his shoulders stood tall and broad as if he was proud to be there but had some regrets. 

I slowly approached the man, momentarily forgetting we existed in two different realms.  As I came up behind him, his presence remained perfectly motionless. I was not more than five paces behind him when he spun around in alarm. His eyes wide with disturbance and discomfiture. The look of disorientation quickly shifted to an expression of perturbation. Our eyes locked in silence and something in the air changed. His features looked so familiar to me but knowledge of my life on earth slips away everyday that it was almost impossible for me to figure out who he was. 

Then a realization hit me. I could see him which meant he was an Actual, but he was looking at me. In the eyes. He saw me. 

Impossible.

“You can… see me?” my voice was raspy. I haven’t used it in five years. I’d almost forgotten how to talk. 

He nodded, not releasing his glare from my face. 

“And you’re alive?” I asked.

That question seemed to knock him out of his trace for a moment. 

“A-alive? Y-yes. What kind of question is that?” 

I suddenly became aware that, to him, I was a living human being. There was no reason for him to presume me to be dead. 

“How are you-” he started. He seemed to remember something and turned around to my name on the stone, “but I… I mean you’re…”

“Dead?” I finished his sentence. “Quite correct. Which is why this situation baffles me.”

He gave me a peculiar look and seemed to be absent of words. 

“You are of the living, yes?” I tried to explain. “Well,” I pointed at my gravestone, “that information is correct. 1980-1999. I died five years ago. November-”

“First,” he interrupted me. 

I eyed him suspiciously. How could he have possibly known that? Who was this guy? 

His focus constantly darted from my grave to me as if he was trying to piece together a puzzle of information that simply didn’t match. “So… I’m not crazy? You’re really dead.”

“Well, yes, but if anything, that makes you even more crazy.”

He stared at me blankly.

“You are correct in believing that I died, but here you are now, talking to a-uh- well how you would put it-a ghost,” I stated bluntly.

His eyes fell to his feet, as if he were trying to see through the soggy dirt and wooden box below him to find my corpse. I looked down too and my gaze stopped at something familiar. His shoes. More specifically, his black leather boots. I know I had seen them before but nothing was coming to mind. My deteriorated memory was screaming at me but there was a wall blocking any flow of information.  

The moon was fully awake now and the clouds began to depart from the sky. A streak of moonlight landed perfectly on the man’s face. It outlined his features in such a way that petrified me. A gateway opened in the wall in my head and memories flooded through. 

I staggered backwards. 

The man seemed to notice and looked up. He must have solved the look of consternation my face held because his expression hardened to a soft, desensitizing glare. 

“What are you doing here,” I mumbled in a soft tone, not knowing how to process the recent evocation. 

A soft smile tugged at his lips, but I couldn’t tell if it was sympathetic or pathological. “I was wondering if you knew.”

I was at a loss for words. My head was exploding with information and questions.

“I-you… why are you here?” I demanded.

 “I think a more valid question is how are you here?” He smirked.

My face hardend. “You need to leave. Now.”    

His eyes fell soft and he turned back to my grave. “This is my first time here, you know. I was never sure if I’d get myself to do it.”

My gaze never left his face. I remembered every feature. Every freckle. Every misplaced hair. A victim never forgets. 

I became aware of a silver stick poking out of his trench coat. A knife. The knife. I was suddenly aware of the October breeze brushing against my shoulders. A dangerous thought crossed my brain. I’d never tried to touch anything that existed in the living realm, but that didn’t stop me from thrusting forward and seizing the weapon from him. 

The head of the knife burned in my palm as I pulled away from the man. In utter shock, he stared at me, wide-eyed. 

I fidgeted with it back and forth between my hands. This knife was my demise. My life divisor. My murder weapon. 

“What are you-,” he stammered, “what are you doing?” His ice cold focus on the knife. 

I studied the fear in his face and pleasure arose within me. Without an answer, I lifted the knife under his chin. 

“You-you’re dead. You can’t kill me,” his voice wavered. 

“Then why are you here. Why can you see me? Hear me?” My skin was growing warmer and I pressed the point against his neck, drawing blood.

“It’s impossible!” He sounded as if he was trying to convince himself. 

“Try me.” I took another step forward. We met eyes and I saw that same lustful sparkle I saw five years ago.

“You are playing a dangerous game without so much a glimpse into the rule book,” he warned.

“You did that the night you murdered me.”

With that, I sliced his throat. 

The clocktower down the road struck 12:00am on November 1st. 

“See you in the afterlife,” I whispered, “Happy Halloween.”