A Romance Reader

The Ghost Who Loved-2

Rose was quiet, but all smiles. For a moment I thought she was freaked out too much to talk.

“I just love your house. It’s beautiful,” she exclaimed. “I’m Rose.” And stuck out her own hand.

My dad shook her hand warmly. “I’m Sam, this is Beth. Very happy to meet you.”

Beth came over and put her arm around Rose, leading her into the living room. “I’m sorry, but we saw you from down the street and were all pins-and-needles waiting for you to finally get here. It’s been so long since Tom had a friend his age to talk to.” She gestured Rose into a wide mission-style armchair, while she and Dad both sat across a coffee-table on a matching couch. I took the other arm chair.

“So, how did you both meet?” Mom asked, fidgeting with the top collar of her pink button-up sweater.

Rose looked at me. “Well, it turns out we both were visiting the cemetery.”

Both Dad and Mom took this in stride, which made Rose relax.

“It’s that time of year Tom visits his sister,” Dad nodded to me.

My cue. “It turns out that she visits her own family there at that time. I’m surprised we hadn’t seen each other before. I guess it was inevitable that we would some day. So we did.”

About then, I noticed that Rose was getting nervous. “Is there something wrong, Rose?”

She stood up, suddenly. “Tom, I...” Looking around the house, her eyes were getting wide and her hands started shaking. “...I don’t think that...” Dad and Mom both nodded to me.

“Let’s go outside, Rose.” I took her by the arm and she let me lead her back through the front door. And we almost made it.

Then she vanished.

VAFTER THAT FIASCO, I stayed far away from that cemetery. That was just too weird.

Something wasn’t right about this. Ghosts can’t feel people. And I certainly can’t kiss them. We can’t walk arm and arm with people. Because they are real and we are... unreal. Not even dead. Just something that didn’t turn out right. Like - freaks.

Just crazy people and kids could see us. And animals. But like humans, ghosts can’t have pets. If they touch pets or live people there is this weird reaction that happens.

Loneliness is just a way of life for ghosts. All the ghosts I’ve ever met were like that. Alone. And most of them were also crazy. Repeating their deaths over and over, unable to move on past a certain part.

Tom and his well-adjusted family that treat ghosts like people, that was just - weird.

And that touch, that hug. That kiss.

I could still smell him. It was - wait. I couldn’t smell him. He didn’t have a smell, neither did his parents. Their house smelled like - wait. That’s too weird. That house had no smell.

I stopped in front of the next house I walked in front of and knelt down where I was. Yea, that stinks. Asphalt, dirty concrete. Rubber tires.

I went over to the nearby bushes. Yea, evergreens. The mail box on the fence smelled dirty, and had a paper smell to it, old perfumes from scratch-and-sniffs. Yuck. I walked through the gate separating those bushes into their yard. I could smell their grass clippings.

I walked up their steps. Old paint smell, dust smell. I leaned over and smelled their door. More of the same. Then I went right through the door to the inside. Now, here was a house. Lots of horrible smells from meals that got burned. Air cleaner over the top of those. Laundry waiting to be done. Perfumed detergent.

I finally got depressed enough. I had to walk out and onto the street to get some wind and clear my nose.

Even the air stunk in L.A. Santa Ana winds brought the char smell from some fire somewhere. And otherwise, it was always that faint ocean smell, but mostly all over the car exhaust.

One thing a ghost, or at least this ghost, could do was smell.

But Tom, his house, his family had no smell. He wasn’t real.

I knew it. It was just too perfect.

So I walked down to the L.A. Subway and caught the next train over to Long Beach. Once we were above ground again, the air stunk, like normal. But it was a real stink.

Life just stinks. That’s the way it is. Literal and figurative. It’s been that way ever since my family died and would be that way forever for me. Stink, stink, stink.

Guess I’d better get used to it.

Looks like I’ll be here in time for sunset.

At least your sight doesn’t stink. The air pollution just makes the sunsets redder, better. Just put up with the smell and feast your eyes.

The only problem was that I wanted to feast my eyes on Tom.

VII WALKED FOR WEEKS trying to find her again.

I knew it was just too good to be true. My Dad and Mom understood. They saw how upset I was. So they just told me to go find her. I could finish those classes next semester, or the one after that if I had to.

Yea, weird. Like Rose would say.

Dad had told me about this problem that ghosts have. If you move too fast, they get uncertain. Their life is changing too much and they can’t handle it. The old fears creep in. Then they leave, go back to where they felt safe.

What did she tell me about? Nursing homes, day care centers, Long Beach, Venice, Santa Monica. And that particular cemetery.

Such a huge area to cover. Most ghosts stayed in a little spot. But this one was traveling all over.

So I started traveling all over. To find a ghost, you usually had to work on sightings.

This girl was different though. She didn’t haunt. That’s what made her special to me. She wasn’t weird like most ghosts. And she was almost the same age as me. That hair, the touch of her lips. A great hugger.

I was in trouble now. This is probably what they call love. Uh-oh.

Time to get some help.

VIII WAS BEING FOLLOWED. I could tell.

Stalked, actually. Hunted.

All the other ghosts I’d ever talked to didn’t tell me about this problem.

But if there were ghosts like me that traveled all over the place, it probably meant there was a way to track them. Yin-Yang, plus-minus, Eternal Balance, all that stuff.

That doesn’t mean I need to accept being tracked. I got off the subway at the next stop and went upstairs to catch another going north. Rode that one for a few miles. Then got off and walked up to the street. Walked to the nearest bus station and waited. Got on and rode that until it turned on itself to return.

Then I walked into the woods and climbed a tree.

And waited.

Because I still felt something was following me. But I didn’t see anyone.

How did you track a ghost anyway? Usually it’s by location. But I could come and go anywhere I wanted. So I did. All over L. A. I hated this place, but it was big and I could always move if I got bored. Plenty of art museums and movie houses. And the farmer’s markets! Oh the smell of fresh-baked bread and real fruit. Citrus.

I leaned back against the tree trunk and remembered what it was like on a Saturday. A side street on downtown Hollywood. Near the library. A few blocks from Grahman's. Most of Hollywood was dirty. They even power-washed the sidewalks early in the morning to get rid of the candy spills and other spills that stuck the dirt to their precious sidewalk of stars. Lots of history in that place, down those streets.

Sirens all the time. That was another thing. I could hear. Things made sounds. Most ghosts made sounds, but few people could hear them. And their hauntings were by location, so the ghosts would tune in their particular “stuckness” into moving objects or making sounds in those particular areas.

Boy, I was having to figure this ghost stuff out.

But I still felt I was being tracked.

Do ghosts have feelings? Well I do. I could have my feelings hurt by some old geezer who would think I was his daughter or one of his old lovers. And children could hurt my feelings by repeating what the “oldsters” said that I wasn’t real. Because they couldn’t touch me and if I touched them, it felt “weird” and sometimes made them cry.

That made me feel bad. But one thing I couldn’t do was cry. I didn’t know why, but no matter how bad I felt...

There was once I saw a real bad car accident. Not my own, I didn’t remember that one. But someone else’s And I couldn’t do anything to help them. The driver just bled out in front of me.

At least I got to talk to him for a little bit. But as soon as he realized he was dead, he just shrugged. Then a light came on his face and he walked right off into it.

But that car wreck stunk. I hung around for awhile just to watch everything get cleaned up. And early the next morning the sidewalk cleaner came by and rinsed off any trace of it. Swept the gutters clean, too. Like it never happened.

Me, I’d never seen a light. Other than street lights and so on. So maybe I didn’t fit into this world as a ghost.

So what was I doing here, then?

VIII“SURE, THANKS.” DAD got off the phone. His face was more relaxed now.

“What did they say, Dad?” I asked.

“They actually already had someone working the case. And were very nice about it. I told them what she was wearing, where the cemetery was, but that we didn’t get her last name. They were really interested that she was traveling so much. But I don’t know what that means, or maybe I shouldn’t hope that...”

“That what, Dad?”

“Let’s sit down.” He moved past me to the Mission couch and chairs in the living room. He took one of the chairs and sat, crossing his legs.

I sat on the couch. And waited.

“She isn’t a normal ghost, we know that,” Dad said. “She probably doesn’t know why she’s here, but from her story it might have something to do with helping people. But an open-ended ghost can become a problem to herself and others.”

I just waited. Dad was trying to find the right words to frame this concept for me.

“Your mom and I found after we retired that we didn’t have to ignore the ghosts we saw anymore. And we started researching into all the phenomenon to do with them. Lots of dead ends and false turns. Even half-truths, like that show on TV where the main actress was always telling them that their job was to see the light and walk into it.

“What a trite piece of nonsense. Probably the only reason that show kept going was because she was a real knockout. But it was a stupid procedural. Over and over and over. Same plot. Lots of grief in it. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a lot better than that, and everyone knew was pure junk, not supposedly based on science. But it went somewhere, at least for the first five years. Then it was a pure hack job at the end.

“Anyway, I got off the point. The point is neither she nor we know what her purpose is, what she is here for, what she’s supposed to be doing. And if she gets into the wrong hands, she could become a danger to the real persons who walk these streets, and drive them, and fly over them.”