Ghost Hunter, I Need Your Help

Ghost Hunter?

Among the seventy-five unread emails, this subject line caught my eye. I hadn’t had a request for a gig in almost six years. Ghost Hunter, since Matt left to get married and Ray went solo, had long since died out.

The sender was someone named Robert.

I opened it and read:

Ghost Hunter,

If this is you. I am in need of your services. I will pay. I found you in the directory at the New York Public Library. Please contact me at 212-459-8452.

Signed,

Robert F. Finnigan

I laughed. Poor old guy, clearly confused. I closed my laptop and thought nothing of it.

But the next morning, staring at the email again, I couldn’t ignore it. My rent was overdue, the café shifts had been cut, and I needed work. Whether it was fate or desperation, I picked up the phone.

A cranky voice answered, like I’d interrupted something important. Robert said the job would pay $20 an hour ($7 more than I made slinging lattes), but he had two questions first:

- How do you take your tea?

- Do you believe in ghosts?

“Black. And yes,” I said.

“8th and York. Blue building. Apartment 6. Take the stairs,” he replied. “I’ll see you at 7 a.m. on Monday. Please don't be late, I have chess at 8am, everyday, and I've never been late.” Then he hung up.

I showed up at 6:45, not sure what I’d walked into but sure not to be late.

“It’s open, it’s always open!” a voice called from inside.

I pushed the door open. A small man shuffled toward me, a white-and-black cat trailing at his feet. The cat brushed against my boot like we were old friends.

“You must be Erin,” he said.

The apartment was small and tidy. The paper stacked neatly. The remote lined up with the coasters. On the coffee table sat a chessboard mid-game, and next to it, a teacup, presumably for me.

“That’s Margaret,” Robert said, pointing to a black-and-white photo of a woman with brushed curls and soft eyes. She was beautiful in the way women in old movies were. His face softened. “My wife. She passed twenty-two days ago. And since she’s gone, things just…haven’t been the same.”

He looked at me, almost pleading. “After she died, she came back. Just for a while. She showed me. She pressed my shirts. She slid my slippers under the bed. Lined up my pills in the box." he went on "And, I know she's really gone because... the music stopped".

"What music?" I asked

"Every night at 8 p.m. sharp, our song played."

Confused be intrigued, I let him continue.

"It was our song, we danced to it every night, fight or no fight. It always brought us back together. She even played it after she was gone. But three nights ago…it stopped."

His eyes welled.

"She’s slipping away" he said "maybe she's lost".

I felt guilt rise in me. I wasn’t a ghost hunter. I was the lead singer of a short-lived, shitty band called Ghost Hunter. But before I could confess, he leaned forward.

“Please, Erin. I need your help.”

Fern, the cat, leapt onto my lap. “Fern likes you,” Robert said softly. “That’s a good sign.” I looked at him, and for a moment I wasn’t sure if what he needed was a ghost hunter or a doctor.

But when I opened my mouth, what slipped out was, “Alright, Robert. Let’s see what we can do.”

That night, I lay awake replaying our conversation. It was heartbreakingly sweet, but also deeply concerning. Part of me was certain he was losing his grip. And yet...some small, stubborn part of me believed him. Believed that maybe Margaret was still out there, lingering in the corners of his apartment or wandering the streets of New York, searching for a way back home. Back to Robert and Fern.

I fell asleep still thinking of him, and just like the night the email first arrived, an idea came to me.

The next morning, while Robert was at chess in the park, I let myself in. I hung his shirts, tucked his slippers under the bed, slipped his empty pill bottle into my bag.

On my way back from the drugstore, I passed a young woman wrestling a suitcase up the stairs. I grabbed the other end.

“Thanks,” she panted. “Sixth floor.”

At the top, she turned toward Robert’s hallway.

“You going to Robert’s?” I asked.

"I'm the one next door to Robert" she said.

"Wait." She froze. “You know Robert?”

We set the suitcase down, and she invited me in. Katie, her name was. Over tea, she told me she’d lived next to Robert and Margaret for ten years, it was her very first apartment after NYU. They had taken her in like family. She showed me what felt like hundreds of photos - birthdays, celebrations, their weekly Tuesday night dinners. She pulled out sweaters Margaret had knit her, notes they had left on her door and little souvenirs from their travels.

When Margaret died, Katie had quietly stepped in. Hanging shirts, setting out slippers, filling pill boxes, putting her phone in their shared air duct, playing "At Last" every night at 8pm.

“I didn’t want him to know,” she said, eyes brimming. “He’d only feel more helpless. They've been so kind to me, it's the least I can do. But I can’t stay. My company’s transferring me. I've already moved most of my things a few days ago but I came back for the last of it. And to say goodbye. I leave tomorrow.” She looked at me hard. “He needs someone. He’ll never ask, but he does.”

I told her about the Ghost Hunter mix-up. She smiled through her tears. “Then maybe you’re exactly who was meant to find him.”

----

I didn’t mean for it to become part of my routine. But something kept pulling me back. Even after I found steady work in music production, I’d still swing by Robert’s every morning...on 8th and York. Blue building. Apartment 6.

While Robert was at chess, I pressed shirts, organized pills, tucked the slippers beneath the bed. He always left a $20 on the counter, but I spent it on his prescriptions, groceries, bills. I couldn’t keep it.

Before Katie left for California, the two of us bought and installed a little Bluetooth speaker in Robert's Kitchen. We set it to softly play “At Last” by Etta James every night at 8 p.m. sharp, the way Margrette used to.

On their final dinner together, a last Tuesday night tradition, Katie told me she’d watched it happen. The music played. Robert stood at the table, tears brimming.

“She’s here,” he whispered. “She came back.”

Katie only smiled.

To him, it was Margrette. Always Margrette. He felt her moving through the apartment, tidying, humming, loving him in the smallest details. He never knew it had been Katie at first, and then me... an almost-stranger who once answered an email.

The very first morning I took over, when Robert came home from chess, he glanced at the board on the coffee table.

“She even finally won a game,” he said with a laugh. The white queen had him cornered in checkmate.

I laughed too. Maybe it was Fern. But deep down, I knew it was her.

Fern always struck me as more of a checkers cat anyway.