For a minute, I feel a little sad. Obviously, Hector is home. He’s just avoiding me and I’m not sure why.
“I know I was late,” I say. “And I’m sorry. My coworker and I went out after work.” I should just lie and say someone needed me or an emergency came up, but I don’t lie to Hector. There’s just something about him that makes me not want to lie.
There’s something that makes me not want to hurt him.
I just don’t want to betray him.
Hector might be the one who haunts my house, but we’ve been roommates for a long time now. I like to think of Hector as my friend, my buddy. I like to think of him as the one who won’t hurt me or become scared of me when I make a mistake. I like to think of him as the one who’s always got my back.
He still doesn’t come out, and my heart hurts. It shouldn’t. Hector and I don’t make promises to each other about the future or about our relationship. We aren’t married or dating. He doesn’t owe me anything, but still, the idea that he would hide away simply because of something I did really stings.
I thought we were closer than that.
I thought we were better than that.
I go through the motions of making dinner and then I turn on a television show to watch while I eat macaroni and cheese alone. It’s silly that it’s such a dumb meal. It shouldn’t feel so good to sit with my best friend and eat a cheap cheesy noodle dinner, but it does. Only tonight, I’m eating alone, and it doesn’t feel so good.
I should be a better friend.
Maybe there’s a way to get along better with Hector. Maybe there’s something I can do. The biggest problem is that he’s tied to my house, haunting it for all eternity, and there’s no way for him to leave the property. Hell, he can’t even leave the building.
This means my options for spending time with Hector are pretty limited.
We can’t even sit on the front porch and drink sweet tea together.
For a long time, that didn’t matter. For awhile, just the fact that I had a ghost was cool enough. Just knowing I had something impossible, something incredible in my house was amazing. It was certainly enough to keep me around the house as much as possible.
Is the problem Hector and I are having that I want too much time away from him?
Does he think I’m moving on and he’s stuck in purgatory forever?
And is that true?
And what do I do if it is?
Chapter 4
When I get up for work the next day, Hector still hasn’t made himself visible. I call out for him a couple of times and check his favorite hiding spots. Yes, my ghost and I play hide-and-go-seek. It’s one of our favorites, at least when I can get Hector not to cheat.
Ghosts are good at cheating.
Hector isn’t under the kitchen sink or on top of the fridge, though. He’s not hiding in one of the bottom dresser drawers or stuffed into the vase that sits on top of my desk. He’s simply gone.
“I’m going to work, buddy,” I call out, but there’s no answer. I need to get to work, but I also really want to see Hector. Apparently, I screwed up pretty badly this time. He usually makes me wait before he comes out, but it’s never been overnight before. It’s never been for a day.
“Did I forget your birthday?” I ask. My words hang in the air, but nothing happens. “Or maybe a special anniversary?” There has to be something I did. I just have no idea what it could have been.
I grab the music box I bought yesterday and begin flipping the lid open and closed. Did I blow off a game night or a movie night? Sometimes we plan a “men’s night in” and play board games and watch bad monster movies until the sun comes up.
We didn’t have one planned, though.
I’m sure of it.
The music from the little wooden box plays and stops, plays and stops, plays and stops. I keep opening and closing the lid, interrupting the rhythm of the music until I can’t take it anymore and just leave it open. The song plays, filling the air with the crisp, high-pitched noise. It’s not particularly beautiful or sweet. The song doesn’t speak to my heart or make me feel anything.
It catches my attention, though, perhaps more than it should. The sound calls to me, demanding my eye, demanding my mind, demanding my thoughts. I look at the box as the song plays, filling the air with the sound of adventure and intrigue, with the sound of peace and hope, with the sound of…desperation.
Anxiousness.
Nervousness.
The song morphs into something else and I realize this is the second song the music box has to offer. This is the second song out of three. It’s one of the things that makes this box in particular so unique, but at the moment, all I can feel is the emotion behind this specific song, and I close the box.
The sound of wood hitting wood fills the air. The dull thud rings out in the silence and I just sit there for a minute, feeling everything that song wanted me to feel and so much more. It’s been awhile since something made me feel so deeply.
It’s been awhile since the world seemed to hurt so much.
Maybe I’m just overly sensitive because Hector and I are quarreling. I don’t know if we can even call it that. Is it quarreling if you aren’t even talking to each other? Is talking required to have an actual fight?
I feel like by now, I should understand the rules of adult interactions enough to know how to deal with my ghost, but I don’t.
I’ve let him down as a friend.
I’ve let him down as a best friend.
With a heavy heart, I get my shoes on and head out the door to work. Somehow, the day just doesn’t seem as bright as it usually does. The sun doesn’t seem to shine.
***
My work day passes by slowly, but I manage to avoid Eric all day, which is some sort of miracle in and of itself. As I leave, I say goodbye to Candice, who waves and flashes me a sweet smile. Maybe the two of us will hang out again sometime. Yesterday really was fun. Despite all the fighting and ignoring and hurt feelings my adventure resulted in, I had a good time with Candice herself. She’s sweet and interesting, and she’s got unusual ideas about the world that I really like.
I get to my car and drive home. My thoughts are mixed between Candice and Hector. Is it possible to have both? I have to wonder. My brain tells me to fuck myself, but my heart says anything is possible. I wonder if I can figure out a way to date Candice, but still stay friends with Hector. Surely there’s a way to balance everything in my life.
Surely there’s a way to find peace.
I stop by a fast food joint and pick up some burgers, fries, and milkshakes. When I walk into my house, I drop everything on the coffee table. Before the bags have even hit the wood, I’m hit by an invisible force that shoves me to the ground.
“Fuck!” I yell out when my head hits the floor. “What the hell, man?” I’m not scared because I know exactly what’s happened.
Hector has happened.
“What did you do?” He spits out at me. He’s become visible and even though the room is spinning, I can see him above me from my spot on the floor. He’s in my face and I wish I could smack him.
“Back off.”
“What did you do?” He repeats.
“Nothing! I got dinner, okay? What do you think I did? I didn’t ask them to poison your food or anything. I’m just trying to be a decent person, all right? I’m just trying to be fucking nice.”
I get up and storm into the kitchen to find some ice for my head. At the very least, I need a bag of frozen peas to take the sting away. Hector and I have wrestled before and tumbled around, but he’s never attacked me before. Not without being provoked, anyway. What the hell was that all about? I’m so busy mumbling I don’t even notice him coming into the kitchen until he’s directly in front of me as I stare into the freezer.
“What?” I ask, reaching through him to grab a bag of frozen food. Apparently, I’m out of ice.
“What happened yesterday?” Hector asks.
“You mean before or after you star
ted ignoring me?”
“I was angry.”
“About what?”
“You didn’t come home.”
“I’m not a child, Hector. You can’t force me to come straight home after work. Sometimes I do other things. That’s allowed. I’m allowed to have my own life.”
When did my relationship with my ghost companion get so co-dependent?
“You should have let me know.”
“How?”
“You could have figured out a way.”
“What? Like sending seven black ravens to the house? Dammit, Hector. We’ve had this fight before.” I smack the food onto my head a little too hard and I groan at the pain.
“I’m sorry about your head.”
“It’s fine.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“Then what did you mean to do? Because from where I’m standing, it seems like you were a little bitch to me for two days and then decided to be even meaner.”
“You brought a new ghost home,” he says. “Why would you do that, Dane? What happened yesterday?”
“I didn’t bring a new ghost home. What are you talking about? I went out with Candice yesterday and then I came home. End of story.”
“No,” Hector lowers his voice. “It’s not the end of the story, Dane. There’s something else here. It’s haunting us right now.”
“A ghost being haunted? Cute. Let me past.” I move through the kitchen and into the living room. Then I sit on the couch and reach for one of the bags of food I brought home. Even when everything in my life has gone to hell, I’ve still got French fries. French fries always love me. They never hurt me or make me feel bad about myself.
“It’s true,” Hector insists, following me into the house. “I’ve spent the whole day trying to talk to him, but he’s kind of a dick.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the ghost you brought home last night. You brought something back with you, Dane.”
“The only thing I brought home was a music box,” I say, biting into a fry. Suddenly, realization dawns on me. “Oh,” I look at Hector, my eyes wide. “Was there a ghost inside? How can you tell?” I point at the box, which is still sitting on the coffee table.
“It’s a ghost, all right,” Hector glares at me. “You bought a haunted music box, you idiot.”
“I did no such thing. It’s not haunted.”
“It is.”
“Look at it,” I hold up the box. “It’s hand-crafted, Hector. It’s hand-stained. It plays three different songs. Look.” I open the top of the box and a song begins to play. It’s soft and sweet and I remember exactly how emotional it made me feel right before it changed to the second song.
Who would buy a music box that makes them sad? Why would anyone do that? I glare at the box as the song plays. Right before it switches to the second song.
“This thing makes me sad. What’s wrong with it?”
I frown as I think about how much I spent on this stupid thing. Why did I spend so much?
“What’s wrong is that it’s haunted,” Hector repeats. “And you let the ghost out.”
“I did no such thing,” I tell him.
“Oh?” Hector looks at me the way my father used to look at me. He looks at me like he’s disappointed in me.
“I didn’t,” I insist. “All I did was play the songs this morning.”
“How many songs did you play?”
“Two. Well,one-and-a-half. I couldn’t quite make it through the second one.”
“And how many songs are there in total?”
“Three. I don’t know how anyone makes it to three, though. The second song was so damn depressing.”
“Interesting,” Hector reaches for a burger and suddenly, I’m thrilled. My ghost is going to eat something. Watching Hector eat isn’t as horrifying as I thought it would be the first time we shared a meal. He can taste food and it doesn’t just fall to the floor when he eats it. Since Hector can be transparent or temporarily solid, he can hold the food in what would be his stomach. I keep a box in the kitchen and later, he’ll release the food he eats into there. Then I can throw it out.
It’s this weird thing we do that makes me feel more comfortable because I don’t have to have food falling all over the living room floor and it makes Hector more comfortable because I treat him like he deserves respect, like he doesn’t deserve to just be ignored or like his needs are unimportant.
He takes a bite, but he chews slowly, pensively.
“What?”
“It’s just strange, really. You never buy things on impulse. You always consider your purchases for a month, at least.”
“That’s not true.”
“You waited three months to buy your curtains, dude.”
“They were expensive.”
“They’re curtains.”
“I wanted to make sure I wasn’t rushing into it.”
“So why the box?” Hector looks at it suspiciously. “Out of all the things you could have bought yesterday, you chose a music box. Why?”
I think back to the feelings and emotions surrounding the auction and yard sale. I was happy Candice invited me to come to do something with her. I was excited to spend time with her, but Hector is actually right about the strangeness regarding the impulse purchase.
“I just felt like I needed it.”
“So it called to you.”
“Yes.”
“It’s haunted.”
“Why do you keep saying that?”
“Dane, how much do you know about ghosts?” Hector sets his cheeseburger down. He takes different forms, depending on his mood, but today he’s taken the shape of an ordinary person. Aside from the fact that he’s white and pale and almost completely translucent, Hector looks like your average Joe.
“Well, I happen to have one for a roommate. I’d like to think I know a lot.”
“But how much do you actually know? You know about me. I’m just one ghost.”
“I wasn’t aware there were different types of ghosts.”
Hector shakes his head, like this is something completely unbelievable. Seriously? How am I supposed to know about ghosts? Most humans don’t even believe in ghosts, so I kind of feel like I’ve got an edge here.
“You know most humans don’t believe ghosts even exist, right? I mean, did you believe in ghosts when you were alive?”
“Of course I didn’t believe in ghosts.”
“Then why are you upset with me?”
“I’m upset because we’ve been friends for years and you only know what I’ve told you. You’ve never even looked things up on the Internet about ghosts.”
“That’s not true. I absolutely Googled you when I met you. It’s just that there isn’t a lot of reliable information on ghosts on the Internet.”
“Damn humans,” he rolls his eyes and grabs a fry. “The thing is that all ghosts are different. Most are neutral, but there are good ghosts and bad ghosts. Some ghosts have to haunt things and some can roam, but even roamers are usually limited to one geographical location.”
“Right,” I say. “And that’s usually the place they died.”
“Or close to it.”
“Like this house.”
“Exactly. I died here, so I have to stay here until…” His voice trails off and he doesn’t finish his sentence. I know Hector wants to move on. He wants his eternity with his family, whether that’s heaven or paradise or some other place humans don’t know anything about. Hector doesn’t want to hang out being my pet ghost. Not forever. I think he’s as tired of being stuck here as I am.
Hector has talked about his family before. He’s talked about the life he lived, about the choices he made, but he hasn’t really told me much beyond that. I know he misses them, of course. That much is obvious, but does Hector feel pain constantly that they aren’t together? Does he worry about them? Does he wonder what happened to them after he died?
Hector didn’t live in th
is house. He lived in a house on the edge of Honeyburg that is now abandoned. I know because he gave me directions and I went there to see it. I went to see if his family was still there. Hector died over a hundred years ago, so I didn’t think his family would still be living in the same house. Still, I had to check. Maybe he had relatives who took over the house. Maybe there were distant cousins or nephews or grandchildren who lived there.
There weren’t.
The house was abandoned.
I looked up newspaper articles about him and no one really seemed to know what happened or why he was at this house, which was owned by a man named Edgar. One minute, Hector was alive and well. The next, he was gone and no one knew what happened. The tricky thing is that Hector doesn’t really know what happened, either. He can’t remember. He told me this is normal for the recently deceased, or just the deceased in general. Once you die, you can’t remember the minutes or even the hours leading up to your death. That all fades away.
Edgar was investigated and interviewed, from what I can figure out, but it’s not like the police reports from a hundred years ago are on the Internet. I can’t exactly use Google to get a transcript of the police interrogation.
I can’t exactly figure out exactly who this guy was to Hector, and to be honest, Hector doesn’t really remember much except they were acquaintances who worked in a shop together. He’s never really told me more than that and I haven’t pushed him too much.
“So what are you saying, Hector? That there’s a music box ghost who haunts anyone who listens to its song?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”
Hector cocks his head to the side and just gawks at me.
“Seriously? Dude, you have a ghost living in your house. We’re literally eating cheeseburgers and fries right now, but a music box ghost is the dumbest thing you’ve heard?”
“Well, why would it come out now?”
“You played the song.”
“I played one song,” I clarify. “And only half of the second one.”
“Why did you turn it off?”
“It was sad.” I shrug, not wanting to tell him the song made me want to cry. I haven’t felt that sad in a very long time, perhaps ever, and I don’t want to think about how it made me feel.
The Haunting of a Ghost Page 2