Three Stories About Ghosts

by Matthew Marchitto

  MARTY USED GOOGLE Maps to put pins on all the known locations of monster sightings. It was incomplete, but a picture was forming. The in-betweener seemed to be circling a certain neighbourhood, never going more than a few blocks away.

  But how to narrow it down? He could wait for more news stories, or he could just go and take a look. Do a couple laps around the neighbourhood to see if there was anything there.

  Marty grabbed a fresh hoodie and headed out.

  Wallace sat with his back against Mrs. Hubbard’s door.

  “Going out at this time of night?” the old ghost asked.

  “Just for a walk.”

  “Ah, right. Walking’s good for you. I should’ve been smart like you. But what can you do?”

  “Right, yeah. Not much, I guess.”

  Wallace wrung his hands. “You’re not getting into trouble, are you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “It’s just, you had a guest, and I was worried.”

  “Don’t be,” Marty said. “I’ve got everything under control.” He thudded down the creaking stairs.

  “Are you sure?”

  The door closed behind him.

  Chapter Five

  The In-Betweener

  MARTY PRESSED HIS toe down on the curb, wondering if the next step would take him past some unseen threshold. An ordinary person would say that was ridiculous, but ordinary people didn’t live with ghosts all around them.

  And that was what Marty noticed. There were always ghosts, going this way and that. A couple in the street, some chatting on the sidewalk, leaning on doorframes.

  There were no ghosts here. The street was quiet, barren. Was this what it felt like to be normal? Marty couldn’t decide if he liked it or not.

  He took a step forward. And then another. It wasn’t monumental or life-changing, not in the way he though it should be.

  There was a lot of neighborhood to cover. He couldn’t do it all tonight. Maybe he should just go home. Figure something else out.

  He kept moving, peering down lanes and around street corners. He spotted a few black vans: he wasn’t the only ghost hunter in town.

  The houses were mostly duplexes, with bungalows sprinkled throughout. Little plots of grass hugged walkways and front steps, dotted with shrubs.

  Why here? It was so… plain. Nice, but plain. Why was the in-betweener circling this neighbourhood?

  Marty caught sight of a silhouetted figure standing in a laneway. They leaned against a fence, hunched over, limping—no.

  Shambling.

  Marty froze, afraid to move, afraid to act.

  The in-betweener heaved, his chest rising and falling with deep wheezed breaths.

  Marty reached into his backpack and gripped his shark tooth dagger. Tentatively, he walked forward. I can do this, I can do this.

  The in-betweener’s face was pallid and green-tinged, his eyes bloodshot. Viscous black liquid bubbled from his mouth, dripping steaming dollops onto the ground.

  Marty neared, only a few feet away from the in-betweener.

  The in-betweener stepped forward, clawed-hand gripping the chain-link fence, his head tilting to look at Marty with his less varicosed eye.

  “You see me?” the in-betweener said.

  “Yes.” Marty’s voice shook.

  “You’re like me, like how I was.” The in-betweener reached out a hand bloated with decay. “You have to help me.”

  Marty stepped back, grip tightening on the shark tooth dagger. “I can help you pass on.”

  “Pass? No, no, no.” The in-betweener shook his head, ooze bubbling from his mouth as he started to cough.

  “It’ll stop, the pain. I just have to…” Marty held up the shark tooth dagger. “If you let me, this’ll help you.”

  The in-betweener started breathing rapidly, his black-crusted nostrils flaring. “You don’t understand you don’t fucking understand, no one does you fucking—” He reached a grasping hand for Marty, grabbing a handful of his hoodie. “You don’t know anything, don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s not nice it’s not pretty.”

  Stab him, said a voice in Marty’s head, not his own. Stab him now.

  The in-betweener shook Marty, baring his green-tinged teeth. “I can see now, you understand? I can see what happens, and I don’t want it. Neither do you, nobody does. You just don’t know it yet.”

  “Please, I can help. Just let me. It’ll put you at ease. You don’t want to live like this, do you?”

  “You don’t know, not yet.” His grip tightened. “I didn’t deserve it, you understand? I don’t deserve it.”

  STAB HIM.

  Marty raised the bone dagger over his head.

  The in-betweener screeched, stumbling backwards and falling to the ground. He raised one hand to ward off Marty. “Please no. Please, God, please, no.”

  Marty held the dagger over his head. Just do it, he told himself. He’s right there; just do it and this is all over.

  The in-betweener wept tar-black tears. They rolled down his cheek, bubbling and boiling. He was muttering now, “Please no please God no I can’t please why please please please.”

  Marty lowered the dagger. “I know you don’t know me. But trust me, this will be better than how you’re living. Just let me do it, it’ll make everything better.”

  The in-betweener’s face contorted into a snarling, angry visage. “Fix everything? Nothing will fix this, nothing.” He spat the words, black oil spattering the concrete.

  “This is how it has to be.”

  “Has to be?” The in-betweener scrambled to his feet. “You don’t fucking understand, you can’t, you won’t.”

  STAB HIM, the voice boomed in Marty’s mind, rattling his skull.

  The in-betweener ran, shambling away. Marty followed, bone dagger clutched in his hand. He was catching up, and he reached out to the in-betweener.

  The in-betweener grabbed one of the chain-link fences and pulled. A sickening squelch followed as the fence morphed into an undulating pound of vivisected flesh. Marty gasped, stopping in his tracks.

  The in-betweener crawled through a hole in a fence, into a backyard.

  Follow him, do not let him get away.

  Marty ran, trying to ignore the writhing flesh beside him. He shouldered through the broken fence and saw the in-betweener limping down an alley between houses. Marty’s legs pumped; the in-betweener wasn’t fast, and within moments Marty would catch up.

  The in-betweener raked his hand along the house’s red bricks, and in his wake, they began to undulate and writhe. Marty charged forward. If he could just get within arm’s reach…

  The wall bubbled, forming boils that distended and popped. The slimy flesh grew and expanded, pushing at Marty’s shoulder until he was pressed against the neighbouring house.

  His heart hammered in his chest, fear urging him forward. The flesh was slick against his skin, and he felt it slowing him down, trying to grow around his body as though to pull him in.

  The streetlights filtered through a membranous layer of ghost flesh above him, tingeing his world red and raw. He cried out, primal and terrified. He stumbled, grabbing a handful of flesh, which popped in his hand, covering it in yellow liquid.

  The flesh pushed him to the ground, bearing down on him. He crawled, eyes wide, panicked cries burning his throat raw.

  And then light, and the weight lifted. He crawled and scrambled away, standing in the middle of the street.

  One half of the house had turned into a writhing mass of meat, bubbling over the top and onto the roof of the adjacent home.

  Police sirens, flashing lights.

  Marty ran home.

  HE’D TORN HIS clothes off and threw them in the garbage. Another hoodie gone. Naked, he stood in the shower, letting the warm water wash over him for he didn’t know how long.

  The mass of bubbling meat replayed itself in his mind—over and over like a broken reel. He couldn’t will it away, he couldn’t think to try.

 
He never wanted to leave the shower.

  He wanted to close his eyes and never wake up.

  Marty cried in the shower, wracking sobs that shook his body.

  As he cried he saw the bulging veins of exposed flesh, and he cried harder because he knew it would never leave his mind. That he would never sleep the same again. That what had happened wasn’t some nightmare he could wake from.

  His crying rose from his gut, a deep wail that emptied his lungs with despair.

  MARTY STARED AT his sticky-note wall in a daze, imaging the notes filling with pus like balloons. He was startled by the sound of his phone vibrating on the coffee table. Steph. He set the phone to silent and put it face down on the table.

  He refreshed all his browser tabs, mechanically. The bright orange flames didn’t register at first, but then he focused and saw the report. A fire in his neighbourhood had burned down one home and spread to a second. One dead.

  It was the house the in-betweener had touched, Marty knew it. The only picture was from around the corner, catching a glimpse of the rising smoke and licking flames; but Marty knew it was the same house.

  One dead. He stared at the screen. One dead because I didn’t stab him. It was Marty’s fault, how could it not be? He had the in-betweener right in front of him, and he was too chickenshit to do anything about it.

  One dead.

  He felt his skin catch on fire, his blood boiling. A tightness constricted his chest and his vision blurred as tears threatened to escape.

  He closed his eyes, taking in deep shuddering breathes.

  I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t stab him.

  Someone knocked at his door. Marty jumped, unreasoning fear urging him to run. He breathed, calming himself as best he could.

  He bent to look through the peephole, and remembered it didn’t work. He wasn’t sure how he’d managed to break a peephole. He unlocked the door and opened it.

  Steph, rosy cheeked and bundled against the chill air, jabbed a finger at him. “Do you know what time it is?”

  “Uh,” he tried to guess based on the daylight, “noonish?”

  “Maudit câlice,” Steph threw her hands into the air. “Can I at least come in?”

  Marty stepped aside so Steph could march past him. She took her shoes off and left them on the tiny carpet he kept near the door, and then wiggled out of her jacket, tossing it on the couch.

  Marty glanced at the clock. Well, shit. It was 4:00 P.M.; he’d missed his entire shift. He was supposed to be on lunch duty today.

  “Alhad is the only thing keeping you from getting fired,” Steph said. She made a round of his coffee table, as though looking for evidence of wrongdoing. And then her eyes drifted to his wall. “What the fuck?” She stared at all the sticky notes, his makeshift corkboard. “Marty, what is this?” She leaned close, reading the sticky notes. “Are you stalking somebody?”

  “What? God, no.”

  She thrust her hand at the wall. “Then what the hell is all this?”

  “It’s, uh. I’m into a conspiracy.”

  Steph groaned. “Have you cracked? Is this a call for help?”

  “No, no. Just look,” Marty pointed to the sticky notes. “There’s been a trend of stories about weird creature-thing sightings. But they’re all covered up as being, like, a sick homeless guy or a dog with a disease or whatever. And”—he pulled up some screenshots on his laptop— “these are screencaps of what people are actually seeing. There are even posts being deleted.” He shoved the computer at her. “See?”

  “Uh, okay. That’s definitely creepy. But I still don’t get the point?”

  “The government is covering it up.”

  Steph rolled her eyes.

  “Look! A screencap of a journalist’s social media post about one of the creatures, and then—check their timeline—it’s gone.” Marty loaded up the profile and showed her.

  “There are a million reasons why someone would delete a post.”

  “Yeah, but then never mention it again?”

  Steph ran her fingers through her hair. “I think you’re seeing things where there’s nothing to see.” She gestured to the sticky note wall. “This is insane, Marty. This is why you’re missing work?”

  “Maybe.”

  Steph looked at him, really looked, like she was trying to find the cracks. The broken parts of him. “This is fucked up.”

  “Yeah.”

  Steph tabbed through all his open sites, looking over the keywords he’d used to try and find posts related to the in-betweener’s victims. “You really think there’s some kind of monster stuff happening in the city?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you’re trying to… track it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you don’t think this behaviour is bizarre and alarming?”

  “Yeah—uh, well. Probably.”

  Steph set the laptop on the coffee table, sidled around it to the entrance, and started putting on her shoes.

  “Steph?”

  “I’m going to tell Alhad that you need some time, he can smooth it over with the owner. At least for a while. I don’t know what’s going on with you, but I think you should see a doctor. You can call me if you need anything, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Steph pulled on her coat and was out the door.

  He collapsed face-first onto his couch. Fucking hell.

  Chapter Six

  A Favour

  MARTY WOKE TO frantic knocking at his door. He groaned, rolling over and wincing at the kink in his neck. It was past midnight. Was it Steph? Maybe she forgot her phone or something. Marty waddled to the door and swung it open.

  “What did you do?” Wallace said.

  Marty rubbed the crud from his eyes. “What are you talking about?”

  Wallace looked frightened and nervous. “There’s a man outside who wants to see you, he’s been calling your name.”

  “What, who?” The fog cleared from Marty’s head. Could it be a BOA agent?

  “He’s a ghost. But, Marty, he’s not right.”

  “Not right?” Oh, no. “Stay inside, Wallace, no matter what. Don’t get near him, don’t touch him. Stay away.” Marty pulled on some clothes, grabbed the shark tooth dagger and stumbled his way down the stairs.

  Wallace’s voice trailed after him. “What did you do?”

  Outside, the in-betweener leaned one shoulder against a streetlight. Wet, rasping coughs shook his body. Black tar bubbled from his throat to patter onto the cement.

  “Marty, Marty, Marty.” He said it like a mantra.

  “How do you know my name?” Marty clutched the bone dagger, but kept his distance.

  “I hear things. I know things. Do you want to end up like me? I know you don’t, but it’ll happen. It always does. It’s because we’re scared. Aren’t you scared, Marty?”

  “You’re hurting people.”

  “You’re not listening, Marty. I need something, you can do it. Please, can’t you do it?”

  Marty edged closer. “Do what?”

  “A pocketknife from my home. My father gave it to me decades ago. I’m scared, I don’t want to go alone. You understand, don’t you, Marty? Let me have him with me, I always needed him. I’m not strong. You see that, I know you see that.” Coughing wracked his body, shaking him from the inside. “It’s just a little knife, a little nothing. Please, it’s all I need. Then I’ll go, like you want, I’ll find peace. No more hurting.”

  “You won’t resist? You’ll just pass on, no running, no fighting?”

  “No running, no fighting.”

  He was within arm’s reach of the in-betweener, Marty could lash out and hit him. “You promise?”

  The in-betweener smiled, bile-crusted yellow teeth gleaming sickly in the streetlight. “I promise.”

  Marty relaxed his grip on the bone dagger. “Okay, I can do that.”

  The in-betweener reached into his pocket and pulled out a pair of keys. They gleamed, flecked with light like sparkling s
now. Marty put out his hand, and the in-betweener dropped them into his open palm. Marty’s ears popped, and for an instant he thought he heard a distant thunderclap. The keys looked more solid, more mundane in his palm.

  The in-betweener’s face grew sallower, his eyes more sunken, and his coughing more violent. The tar-like sputum poured from his mouth like a ruptured artery.

  “Please, Marty. Let me go with a memory of my father, with a little bit of peace and strength.”

  “I’ll get it for you. I promise.”

  The sickly ghost turned to hobbled away. “I’ll be waiting. Thank you. Thank you, thank you…”

  THE IN-BETWEENER HADN’T told Marty where his house was, if he could even remember. But Marty had a good idea of where it’d be and how to find it.

  Fog had rolled in, in the quiet neighbourhood with no ghosts. The streetlights were muted beacons, fighting through the gloom. The only living creature Marty saw was a skunk, waddling from yard to yard.

  Beside one of the streetlights stood a figure of flayed flesh with burning eyes. The Boneman stared at Marty, his head slowly turning to follow Marty’s gait.

  Oh, no.

  And then the Boneman was in front of him, staring down with a skeletal grin. Marty felt the malice emanating from those emotionless sockets.

  You made a deal with him. The Boneman’s voice was like screeching crickets.

  “It’s part of the plan.” Marty brushed past him, walking faster.

  The Boneman’s voice seemed to follow him, always in his ear. You weren’t supposed to make a deal.

  “I’m handling it.” Shit, Marty, now’s not the time to have a spine.

  Marty’s gaze was pulled to one of the houses, and the Boneman stared at him from its darkened window. You’re failing me, Marty. You had a chance, but you balked.

  “No, I just found another way.” Marty’s pulse quickened.

  He rounded a corner, and the fog became red-tinged, the streetlights radiating black light. Marty’s eyes couldn’t focus, couldn’t understand.