A Ghost Story

Two kids sitting in a brick wall, smoking, laughing, and listening to music. Coffee nights and slumber parties. Movies and drinks after an awful week. That’s what Joe meant to me. I still remember how terribly sad I was when we first met and how terribly alone he felt.

I’m not sure I can ever forget him, even though the face of my once best friend is blurry in my mind. I remember the black hair, the pale skin that reddened with too much sun or without on the cold days. I remember how tall he was and how we could talk about nothing and everything.

Joe died three weeks ago, but for me, he had been dead for years.

We had been mad at each other for a few months, almost a year. I thought it would eventually go away and we would go back to the happy best friends we had always been. That we’d find some common ground. He didn’t like that I belittled my efforts to get out of the city, and I didn’t like that he always chose to stay in it, even when he could go away. Our city was a horrible place, but it was all Joe knew.

For a couple of years, I guess we both could see the end coming, but we looked the other way.

Right after I moved countries and left our two-bedroom apartment, that’s when it started. Whenever I came to visit, I stayed in my old room, now re-baptized as the “guest room”. On a specially warm December when I came to visit my parents, I also paid a visit to my old friend.

‘Look at it’ Joe said revealing a tiny orb of onyx with words inscribed in it ‘isn’t it beautiful?’

I looked at the sphere but didn’t touch it. It looked beautiful indeed, but there was something else, something evil about it, or rather untrustworthy.

‘Where did you find it?’

‘Oh, we have been excavating this site for a while and they said I could have it’

‘I’m not sure the museum would be okay with that’ I suggested ‘you want another beer?’ I said on my way to the fridge. The apartment was weird now. Joe had made a couple of changes to the room, there was a new couch, my old room was now the TV room and outside the window a big blue and white screen shone upon us, advertising toothpaste and junk food.

‘Okay, they don’t know it exists, but hey, I deserve nice stuff too’ he said ‘no thanks’ he answered as I took a beer.

‘How are things with Ali?’ I asked to change the conversation. He sighed ‘Not good then?’

‘She’s fine…’ his voice trembled ‘she won’t do it again, she promised this time would be…’

‘What?!’ I snapped ‘come man you can’t keep…’

‘I don’t care really, we all make mistakes, right?’ he said trying to sound happy, but his face was far from it.

‘Not for the third time’ I whispered.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?!!’ Joe snapped.

I stopped listening for a second, drawn in concern.

‘Don’t give me that look’ he said.

‘What look?’

‘Like I’m crazy’

‘Hey, what do you think about this beer I bought? It’s good isn’t it?’ I tried to change the conversation.

‘I love her,’ Joe admitted ‘she’s not that bad’

‘Fine’ I said. ‘I just want you to be happy’

It would take a while before we met again, he knew how much I disliked Ali and her occasional cheating. She was not a bad person, but I couldn’t say they were good for each other. He would become depressed or angry when this happened and she said she would never do it again, then after everything was fine, Joe would avoid her and ignore her for weeks. He always hated listening to my opinion, so I tried not to give it.

A year passed by and I returned for another warm December at my parents’ house. On my last night, we had a big fight, one of those you can only have with someone who you have known for a very long time. It’s funny, the worst fights are the ones that never seem to make sense, I swear I don’t remember why we fought, only fragments of it, all I knew is that he had started it and that he was going to finish it!

But he never contacted me, so we never talked again. I never heard from him, he was, as good as dead.

I must have received a thousand calls from my boss on the day he died for real. So when I was just returning home to my puppy, a Labrador retriever, and I was finally free of all the madness on the telephone, I decided not to answer it anymore. My cellphone must have rung about a dozen times before someone decided to leave a voicemail. It struck me as something important then, so I listened to it.

It was Laura, Joe’s mother. She couldn’t speak properly, her voice trembled and broke at uneven times, and you even could hear the tears coming out of her words.

‘It’s Joseph,’ she finally managed, ‘he’s dead’

My heart sank. Dead? No, of course not, he couldn’t be, dead. I fell to the floor and started crying, the baby Labrador, Leo, came running to my side. He, he couldn’t be dead. That was the worst night I’d ever had.

I didn’t fully believe it until I saw him in the casket. He wore his usual combed black hair, a long beard, and his brown leather jacket. It was him without a doubt, he was dead and there was nothing I could do.

When they heard about Joe’s demise, the museum he used to work on send their condolences, alongside a request to his mother about a missing artifact. Laura wouldn’t dare to visit his old apartment again. Not since she found him lying dead on his bed, with blood all over the carpet. She asked me to go instead, I could take anything I wanted and if I was lucky, look for the damn sphere.

I walked down the dim-lit corridors of the city streets the next afternoon until I reached the huge apartment complex where he used to live. The automatic door was locked so I had to press a button to call for the guard to come to open up.

He took a few minutes to arrive, and every damn second he did my discomfort grew bigger and louder, like an express hot pot. What was I doing there? Joseph… we hadn’t talked in years… and now his mother wanted me to collect his stuff? To look for that damn piece of onyx? This didn’t feel okay, but there was I, diving into the mud one last time for Joe. Just like I used to when we were teens.

The outside facade of the building unnerved me. It was a wreck, the paint was old and stained, peeling down. The automatic glass doors wore scratches, like scars, and the lights were out. It used to be a yellow building, with lots of light and nice glass doors. I wondered where all that had gone.

The guard opened up and guided me to the tiny apartment. He opened the door and left, running like a mouse being hunted by a cat. As soon as I stepped in I understood why the guard had left in such a hurry, the place smelled like rotting food and decay, like a stagnant feeling of the putrid coming for you. There was no light but I tiny ray of dying sunshine that filtered through the curtains. I went into the dark, blindfolded, naked.

I tried to reach for the lights but the power was out. So I opened the curtains, and the window and let the fresh air rush in along with the sound of traffic.

The place was no better on the inside, if anything, it looked messier. There was food on the walls and broken, dirty dishes on the ground. Clothes were left behind all over the place and a briefcase was vomiting books and socks. I knelt over the things, it seemed to me, like someone was in a rush to leave.

A loud noise made me jump, and my heart beat fast. The door closed at the same time cold air filtered through the window. ‘A ghost’ I thought for a second, but of course, it was a stupid thing to think.

I looked around the living room. A rush of laughter came to my memory. Old pop songs and indie music, the smell of beer and smokes. I looked at the table where Joe and I used to sit down, drinking and smoking the night away. Talking about nothing, yet talking about everything.

It had been a long time since I left that tiny apartment, but somehow I felt like looking at a broken home, a place that used to feel safe and soothing, now torn apart by time and lost love. I used to know the exact time of the evening when the bus stopped outside the building complex and people would get out and cars would start shouting that they couldn’t get out in that part of the street, I used to know how to do the coffee in Joe’s old french press so that it wouldn’t stick or get bitter. I even got used to the blue light of that screen outside! But now everything looked different, strange… unfamiliar. The cars made no noise and the giant screen now projected a flashy annoying red light.

My favorite part was the guest room, aka the TV room aka my old room. That’s where I used to stay whenever I didn’t want or couldn’t return to my parents’ house, way before I even moved in. ‘Stay, that way I can pay you all of what you’ve done for me’ Joe would say ‘you don’t have to pay me back. You’re my brother,’ I’d say. I still wonder, where did all the kindness we had of each other go to?’

I carefully reviewed the living room, the kitchen and the guest room. I made a list of everything in every room. I even took photos with my phone and all. I felt like an intruder, checking on the drawers, the book stands, and shelves. I was looking for stolen property, looking for memories, photographs, or something that reminded me of my lost friend, but all I ever found were the thousands of books I had gifted him. Most of them remained unopened and that made me sad, for he had lost the opportunity to live through other eyes, through visiting other worlds.

I saved his bedroom for the last. I didn’t want in, every time I looked at the door I felt a chill running down my spine. His mother found him half dead unable to do anything to save him, blood spilling out of his left arm that had stained the white carpet as if it were a canvas. I was sure the red oils would still be there and that I would be able to make up his silhouette. I’d have to get inside eventually, but I avoided it for as long as I could.

It was a long night, after all, everything I was at the moment was a robber trying to find something valuable, but not wanting inside the obvious place it would be in. I half slept on the couch in the TV room. Voices kept coming to me, happy ones, reproaching ones, songs, and white noise.

At two am I heard a noise, coming in from the main room. At first, it startled me and gave me goosebumps, it even filled my heart with unnatural pain. I wanted to run, but it was time. I approached the door and opened it wide.

An empty bedroom greeted me.

There was a closet, an old tiny TV and books spilled all over. The bed had its white sheets spread around the room, still stained with blood.

‘Shit, Joe!’ I shouted ‘why would you…’

It took me a while to make up my mind, I wanted to leave, never to return. I couldn’t though, not if this was to be the last thing I did for Joe, or his mother anyway. I looked in the closet and the drawers of the TV room.

Nothing, not even in the toilet’s water tank.

The sun was coming up when something hit my left foot. It was the onyx sphere sliding itself through the room.

‘What are you?’ I asked closing in on it. I reached my hand to take it and leave. But the tiny ball was more untrustworthy than ever. I reached for a napkin and a cloth and I grabbed them. The thing violently moved and tried to escape my hands, it tossed me to the sides until I realized it.

‘Fine’ I said ‘I don’t know what the hell you are, but you leave me alone’

I felt as if a bucket of ice pierced me. The sphere or that thing, whatever it was, started shaking from the other side of the room. It stopped looking at me and looked at something behind me. I swear I could see a lonely gruesome eye on it. I turned around to see what grabbed its attention.

A white, translucent figure appeared before me. Combed hair and a long beard. Dressing in old clothes but wearing a distinctive leather jacket above them. He looked sadly at me and to the floor.

‘I’m sorry’ we both spoke at the same time.

I laughed and shed some tears ‘I should have called’ I said

‘And I should have been less on an asshole’ Joe answered.

‘You alright? Wherever you are?’ I wanted to know.

‘I’ve been better and I’ve been worse’ he raised a white spectral finger and touched my forehead.

And I saw it. I saw the forests and the deserts. I saw my grandmother and the times when she was a kid. I heard the noise of the downstairs avenue and then I saw two lost kids in the middle of a strange city, two brothers, but one was gone.

‘That thing, it did this to you?’

Joe nodded.

‘I’m gonna miss you too’ his ghost answered.

‘Don’t worry, we won’t let it take you too’ his voice changed, it turned cold and lifeless. At the sound of these spectral words, a thousand ghosts filled the room, all wearing clothes from other time periods, some talking, some looking as if they just woke up. They all had cuts on their wrists, just like Joe’s.

‘So you didn’t?’ I asked.

‘I don’t think I did’ Joe answered ‘you must go’

I walked to the door

‘Take this,’ Joe said, handing me his journal, some old photographs and his favorite pen.

‘This might help,’ I said and gave him the ankh around my neck. I never took it off.

‘Goodbye, Joe’ I said as I opened the door.

‘Goodbye, Em,’ he said with a smile.

The door closed behind me and I left the building.

A long time passed before I dared talk about that night or before I understood what happened, what it all meant. At least I got to see my friend for the last time.