A Vengeful Ghost

I’ve been following Lily since I died six months ago. I’ve learnt more about her in these six months than I did in the forty-two years I was her father. Lily is my only child and it’s only now in death that I’ve realised I should have spent more time with her. Absent parenting is all I know. My own father adopted the “children should be seen but not heard” attitude and my mother lived in fear of upsetting him, so as children my brothers and I were scared into submission. My father was a detective and married to his job, so naturally I became a detective too, in an attempt to prove to him that I was worthy of his attention. By the time I was excelling at my career, he was dribbling in a bed in a nursing home and my marriage to Lily’s mother was in tatters. I too had become married to my job and my wife had had enough. Was it worth it? At the time I thought it was, I was literally saving people’s lives by putting criminals behind bars, but whilst I was helping others the people closest to me were moving further away than ever.

I was seventy-nine when I had the first heart attack. The second one, “the big one”, happened in hospital two days after the first. That was the one that killed me. I was scheduled to have surgery that day. Lily had visited me in hospital the day before I died. The week before we had met for lunch in my local pub. She’d wanted me to meet her new boyfriend. I was in a bad mood, as usual and I had been rude to them both. We’d mostly eaten in silence. Lily and Michael had left as soon as they’d finished eating. I’d never understood why Lily hadn’t settled down and had children. She’d never had a serious relationship, as far as I knew, and she didn’t even want children! My bad mood that day stemmed from my lack of understanding about her life choices, though I didn’t acknowledge that that was the case. The clarity about myself and my actions in life being dead has given me is truly incredible. I’ve never been able to understand why people don’t want a life like my own: career, wife at home who cooks and cleans and brings up the children. Child in our case. I was angry at my daughter for not being a wife.

I suppose you would call my current state “undead”, though I prefer to think of myself as a ghost. I think I’ve worked out why I am like this: I have a mission to complete before I can “move on”. I’ll explain why.

I came back the day after I died. Out of the blue I materialised in Lily’s flat, in the bathroom to be precise. Lily was sitting on the closed toilet seat. She was sobbing and holding a bloody tissue to her nose. Michael was banging on the locked bathroom door, shouting “come out Lil, we’re not finished talking!” I knelt down next to Lily and looked at the side of her face. There was smeared dried blood on her cheek and her mascara was smudged around her eyes. I tried to speak to her but discovered that I have no voice. I have since discovered that this is true of all ghosts, we can only communicate with each other. More on that later.

Lily stayed in the bathroom for quite some time, and I stayed with her. I hadn’t yet worked out that I could walk through doors and walls so I didn’t know what Michael was doing, but I could hear him banging around inside the flat. When she heard the front door slam, Lily got up from the toilet seat and unlocked the bathroom door and left the bathroom. I followed her. The bathroom we were in was the en suite, so we came out into Lily’s bedroom. It was an absolute mess, as was the rest of the flat we soon discovered. Lily sat down on the sofa and cried some more. I tried to touch her shoulder but my hand didn’t make contact. I knew what had happened here, I was a very good detective but anyone could have worked it out. Michael had wrecked the flat and he had hurt my daughter. I knew why I was here at this exact moment and I knew what I needed to do. I had to kill Michael. I was a vengeful ghost.

It took me about three weeks of following Lily to get the full picture of what was going on in her life. I knew from that lunch we’d had a few weeks ago that Michael was the owner of a gallery that was currently showing some of Lily’s work. They’d met when Lily had approached him with some samples of her work at an event. When Lily had called me to arrange that lunch she had told me they’d been together two months and he was already living with her, a fact which did not help my bad mood at the time. Living together already! Not married! I really was an old-fashioned pig. 

So why would the owner of an art gallery be living with my daughter, I hear you ask. Surely he must be loaded! Well, not this art gallery owner. This art gallery owner was a gambling addict and he was broke. He took advantage of my daughter’s generous nature almost immediately after meeting her. He agreed to show her work and has used that against her since. She is too scared to leave him for two reasons: because of what he might do to himself or her, and also because she feels a sense of gratitude to him for showing her work and the notoriety that has ensued. She is selling paintings at a rate she is not used to, and of course Michael is there rubbing his hands together and spending her money in the casino. 

So are there other ghosts? Yes. And we are all on a mission, usually one involving killing someone. I met my first ghost not long after leaving Lily’s flat with her the same day I came into existence. I didn’t realise he was a ghost at first, I could only see a pile of blankets on the pavement. A hand shot out and grabbed my ankle, which scared the shit out of me and confused me in equal measure as I had established I couldn’t touch Lily, so why could this person touch me? Marcus was the ghost of a dead homeless man who was haunting his old spot in the street in an attempt to find the drunk driver who had killed him. He told me all this with his voice inside my head. It took some getting used to having someone else’s voice in my head, it felt like an invasion, but I soon worked out how to talk back to him and we conversed this way until Lily came back holding a bag of shopping and I went back inside with her. Marcus told me that all ghosts could communicate with and touch each other, but we couldn’t do the same with people who were still living. He also told me that the reason I had come back was because I had something to do. I told him I had already worked that out as I used to be a police detective. Marcus snorted in my mind at that and told me that he hated the police. 

Unfortunately Marcus did not tell me how I was supposed to kill someone. I assumed as he had not yet managed to murder anyone that he didn’t know. I’ve had nothing but time to think about how I could kill Michael, but I still haven’t got past the small matter of not being able to touch anything. Marcus was able to put aside his feelings towards the police and we have become quite good friends. I get the impression he enjoying being a ghost as he doesn’t seem to have any real passion for avenging his death. He has, however, promised to help me kill Michael. He seems pretty sure that this won’t result in him “moving on” as Michael isn’t his intended target. I, on the other hand, can’t wait to “move on” as it means my daughter will be free of her abuser.

I haven’t actually witnessed Michael hit Lily. I’ve witnessed a lot of other things. I’ve seen him steal her credit cards and pretend to not know where they are when she discovers they are missing. I’ve heard him call her a “bitch”, a “slag” and “repulsive”. I’ve heard him tell her that her paintings are shit. Being dead has stripped me of most emotions but I can still feel rage. Yesterday, when I heard Michael verbally abusing Lily, something very interesting happened. I could feel the rage boiling up inside me and I noticed that I could feel the floor I was standing on. I could feel the hardness of it underneath my feet. I put my hand to the wall and I could feel that too. My excitement made the rage fade and suddenly I couldn’t feel anything again. The experience had given me an idea.

I discussed what had happened with Marcus. He hadn’t experienced anything similar, but I wasn’t surprised, he never seemed angry. My theory was that my rage had started to solidify my body. All I had to do was get very, very angry and then I should be able to kill Michael! Which sounds simple but as I said, I barely have any emotions anymore, feeling is very difficult and the only thing that makes me feel any emotion is Michael mistreating my daughter.

I spend the next week in Lily’s flat, waiting for something to happen. Then, on Friday evening, after an argument, Michael storms out. The look on Lily’s face breaks my heart. She goes to bed and I stand by the bed and watch her sleeping face. I think about all the times we argued when I was alive. I think about the lunch in the pub and how horrible I was. I had no idea what I had until it was too late. I get angry at myself, I tell myself what a miserable old man I was, I had a lovely daughter who I largely ignored. I prioritised work over her and her mother. I missed school plays, hospital appointments, parents’ evenings and exhibitions. I blame myself for her terrible taste in men. I make a sobbing sound. Lily’s eyes open and she sits up.

”DAD!” Lily shouts. She is blinking rapidly. I realise I can feel the floor beneath my feet. I touch the headboard. I can feel the wood beneath my fingers. I look at Lily. She’s crying.

”I’m so sorry, darling.” I manage to croak. “I love you.”

”I love you too, dad.”

The bedroom has disappeared. I can’t see or hear anything. I’m gone.