The Absence You Left

I had been looking forward to this.

I floated, arranged luxuriously on my side as though I lay on a chaise lounge, and observed the comings and goings below. Pumpkins grimaced from shop windows, bat-shaped bunting was strung across the street, and I had already seen a few children run by in masks and polyester outfits. I had never cared much about Halloween when I was alive, but in death it held a new fascination for me. After all, tonight was my night – I would no longer be nameless.

The accident had happened almost exactly ten months ago, on the shortest day of the year. Afterwards I had discovered that the stories of ghosts haunting the area of their death indefinitely had been true, and for a while had lamented my bad luck at dying far from home. My family had visited a month later, standing quietly together in a row at the side of the road, and I’d stood in front of them and shouted impotently. They hadn’t brought flowers. It was then, when I’d clutched at my father’s sleeve as he turned to go, that I realised I still had some impact on the living. Though I could not grip him, he had stopped and turned around; his eyes had looked right through mine.

For a while I moped, before putting my one remaining talent to good use and becoming what my mother had always claimed I would be: a nuisance. All over town, people felt hands lightly brush their shoulder when no one else was there. Hair was disturbed with the lightest touch. Feet were prodded as they poked, unwisely, from beneath bedsheets. Oh, I enjoyed roaming through strangers’ houses; I had been reasonably law-abiding in life, but death had made a trespasser of me. It really was fascinating to see how people lived when they thought no one else was watching.

It had been a disappointment not to find others like me, but it was a small town after all. Little more than a high street with a few houses gathered round it, threading its way up the side of the mountain, six miles from the next settlement. A place you passed through, or didn’t, in my case. Perhaps no one else had died recently. Perhaps ghosts had a shelf-life, and eventually faded away after a few years of haunting. It was an encouraging thought – I didn’t want to be stuck here forever.

The younger trick-or-treaters came out before sunset, guided by parents who would be going to their own parties later on. I had found that small children could sometimes see me, if I concentrated hard enough, and for an hour or so I entertained myself by swooping down on them and pulling grotesque faces. Frightening toddlers wasn’t going to go down as my proudest moment, but you take fun where you find it when you’re dead.

Darkness fell and the serious costumers descended. I snuffed out candles in lanterns; ran my fingertips down wide-eyed faces; whispered sad, susurrus laments into waiting ears. The good thing about Halloween was that people were already expecting to be scared. They were already hoping to see something otherworldly, and that made my job easier. I worked hard that night. I wanted people to swap stories about me for months afterwards, perhaps even link my haunting with the tragic accident that had happened early one morning, ten months previously. I would be their ghost. It would no longer matter that my family didn’t visit me.

After a while I noticed someone dressed in a misshapen black robe, hulking on the sidelines. They weren’t interacting with anyone else, their face covered by a hood, and I smirked to see them. They probably thought their outfit and demeanour were super spooky. Not as spooky as the real thing – I would gift them my ultimate move, one I’d been working on for months. If I concentrated really hard, forcing non-existant muscles to engage in the way they once had, I could deliver a good pinch.

I was not expecting the figure to turn towards me as I approached. I was momentarily flustered, before remembering that I was the ghost here and had nothing to fear from a reveller in a low-budget costume. I drifted forward, practising a pinching movement with my thumb and index finger, and the figure drew back its hood.

There was an absence. Not just a dark space, an absence. My mind couldn’t comprehend it. Even with dead eyes, I couldn’t fathom what I was looking at. My vision blurred and skipped, refusing to focus on the anomaly before me. An overwhelming feeling of dread came over me and I backed away, feeling heavy and earthbound.

The figure came forward, moving smoothly. It passed right through the townspeople who didn’t appear to notice its presence at all.

“Stop!” I cried. “Leave me alone!”

I fled, blundering through trick-or-treaters, the wind of my passing blowing out candles as I ran. Why couldn’t I float? Had I exhausted myself with all my stupid tricks? I called out to people for help, but of course no one heard.

I raced up the high street, thinking only to get out of town. As I hit the corner where I’d come off the road, so many months before, I ran straight into an invisible barrier and was thrown back. Of course I’d known this would happen, but in my panic I’d hoped that – just this once – I might be allowed to leave.

The thing was still following me. I whirled, my fear making me angry. I screamed at it, a primal sound which came from the very depths of my soul.

“Go away!” I shrieked, trying not to sob. “What have I ever done to you?”

The veil is thin, it whispered, though I heard it clearly. There was a disturbing, grating sound to its voice, as though it spoke through a mouthful of broken teeth. Your reckoning has come.

I backed away, pressed against the barrier that held me here, and sank to my heels. Around the absence, people were materialising. Some of them stood nearby and stared at me with emotionless eyes, but others appeared among the groups of townsfolk; grandmas bending indulgently over grandchildren as they shared their spoils, husbands resting unfelt hands on partner’s shoulders, children catching the wide-eyed attention of younger, living siblings. I gawped at them all.

“Where did you come from?”

“We have been here all along,” said one of the ghosts near to me. She was dressed in petticoats and a shawl, as though she’d walked out of a Victorian drama. Looking around, I realised that many others wore the fashions of yesteryear too. “But you could not see us. You were bound here, to your own plane of existence, until the edges of the world grew thin enough.”

“Thin enough for what?” My voice was hoarse. I was beginning to remember; the trees blurring past as I sped down the mountain road, the text alert on my phone, the sickening bump and crunch as I glanced at the illuminated screen. The panic as I realised what I’d hit, the moaning as they lay in the road, the blur of trees as I sped on again, the corner which took me unawares…

“For the absence you created to come and claim you.”

The figure shambled forward. Features coalesced out of the void it had inhabited, and the robes fell away to reveal a pellucid being who regarded me with grim satisfaction. I cried; held out my hands to beg first it, then my fellow ghosts who gathered around me now. I hadn’t meant to. I hadn’t meant to. I…

I had been looking forward to this.

The hit-and-run had happened almost exactly ten months ago, on the shortest day of the year. My family had wept for me and lain countless flowers by the spot where I died, my absence growing as the months wore on. I had never cared much about Halloween when I was alive, but in death it held a new fascination for me. After all, tonight was my night. My killer was about to learn that there are definitely worse things than death.