Hope

  1 What does a ghost look like? Todd was bone-tired, exhausted, rung dry. That’s how he accounted for the bizarre thing he’d seen the first night in his new house. He had spent the whole day alone moving all of his stuff from Chicago into the little house in Fawcettville, the small town on the Ohio River where he’d grown up. So it would make sense, wouldn’t it, that his eyes would play tricks? At least that’s what he told himself. Yet, in all his thirty-odd years, his eyes had never once played tricks on him, not really. That was just something people said. Wasn’t it? He trembled as he stood in the bathroom, looking down the short hallway to his bedroom, and turned the hallway light off again. And, again, it happened—in the dark a figure, perhaps a woman, stood very still, just outside his bedroom. She was little more than a silhouette, but she was there. He could see the outline of her chopped-off-at-the-neck hair and the knee-length baggy dress or robe she wore. Todd flipped the light once more, illuminating the hallway. And it, or she, was gone. He darkened the cut-glass overhead light once more—and she was back. Full light and she was gone. A burst of giddy laughter shot out of Todd’s mouth, having nothing to do with humor or mirth. His hand shot up to suppress it. He left the light on and lingered near the bathroom in his flannel boxers, wanting nothing more than to crawl into bed, but he was paralyzed, frozen. He wished there were someone he could call for moral support. But he’d left his old friends behind in Chicago. And Fawcettville—well, he hadn’t lived in this little burg at the foothills of the Appalachians in something like fifteen years. Besides, his phone service wasn’t scheduled to be turned on until tomorrow. “So you can stand here all night until your legs refuse to hold you anymore, maybe sleep on this orange shag carpeting your mom once loved so much. Or you can use up even more of what’s in your dwindling bank account and head out to the Fairview Motel on Route 11.” It was silly. His eyes had to be playing tricks on him, even if this had never happened before. He was simply tired. Who wouldn’t be? It had been a long day. His muscles ached. His eyes burned. He sucked in some air, straightened his shoulders, and forced himself to put one foot in front of the other and march down the hallway to the bedroom that had once been his mom’s but was now his. He never did turn off the hall light. When he crawled into bed, he pulled the covers up over his head and told himself it was to keep out the light seeping in through the sliver where the bottom of the bedroom door met the floor. But he wondered if she was out there….